The Fairy Tales Behind Pixel Muster: Who's Who in the Muster
Published
Every figure that steps off the pages in Pixel Muster comes from a real story: a tale written down by the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault or Hans Christian Andersen, a children’s book such as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the One Thousand and One Nights, or the folk tales of swampland and Ukraine. All of them are old enough to belong to everyone.
This page is a who’s who of all 66 figures, grouped by where their stories come from. For each one you get the source, what happens in the original tale (not in later films), and a line on how the figure’s ability in the game nods to it. Many of these characters live in several countries at once, and we say so where it matters. If you are looking for strategy instead, read the Pixel Muster guide.
The Brothers Grimm and German legend
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected German folk tales from storytellers and old books and published them as Children’s and Household Tales in 1812 and 1815, revising the collection until 1857. Thirteen Muster figures come from their pages or from the German legends they also collected.
Bremen Musicians
From the Grimms’ “The Bremen Town Musicians” (added in 1819). A donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster, each too old to be useful to their masters, run away to become town musicians in Bremen. On the way they find a robbers’ house in the woods, stand on each other’s backs and all make music at once through the window. The robbers flee in terror, and the four friends like the house so much that they never reach Bremen at all.
In Muster: tier 1, Wanderer, Beast, Fool. Cacophony makes the foes near its target flee, just like the robbers.
Golden Goose
From the Grimms’ “The Golden Goose” (1812). The youngest of three brothers, called Simpleton, shares his poor meal with a little grey old man and is rewarded with a goose with feathers of pure gold. Everyone who tries to pluck a feather sticks fast to it, then a parson and a sexton stick to them, and the whole stuck parade makes a princess who has never laughed burst out laughing. The goose that lays golden eggs is a different story, one of Aesop’s fables, but the two geese have long shared a nest in people’s minds.
In Muster: tier 1, Humble, Beast, Gold. Golden Egg lays a decoy that foes cannot leave alone, like the crowd that could not let go of the goose.
Water Sprite
The water nixie of German folklore, a spirit of wells, rivers and mill ponds. In the Grimms’ “The Water Nixie” (1815) she pulls a brother and sister down into a well and puts them to work, until they escape by throwing a brush, a comb and a mirror behind them. In the later Grimm tale “The Nixie of the Mill-Pond” a nixie drags a young huntsman under the water when he washes his hands at the pond, and his wife wins him back with a golden comb, a flute and a spinning wheel. Slavic folklore has its own water spirits, the vodyanoy and the rusalka, with the same habit.
In Muster: tier 1, Aquatic, Humble, Trickster. Undertow pulls the target in and slows it, the way the nixie pulls people under.
Hansel
From the Grimms’ “Hansel and Gretel” (1812). In a year of famine, a woodcutter and his wife lead their two children into the forest to abandon them. The first time Hansel drops white pebbles that shine like silver coins in the moonlight and lead them home; the second time he only has breadcrumbs, and the birds eat them. Locked in a cage by a witch who wants to fatten him up, he holds out a little bone each time she feels his finger, so the half-blind witch thinks he is still too thin to eat.
In Muster: tier 2, Wild, Child, Pair. Pebble Toss stuns its target with one of those moonlit pebbles; Pair, because he never goes anywhere without his sister.
Gretel
The other half of “Hansel and Gretel”. While the witch keeps Hansel in a cage, she makes Gretel her servant. On the day of the feast the witch tells Gretel to crawl into the hot oven to see if it is ready; Gretel says she does not know how, and when the witch leans in to show her, Gretel pushes her in and shuts the iron door. She frees her brother, they fill their pockets with the witch’s pearls and jewels and find their way home.
In Muster: tier 2, Wild, Child, Hunter. Into the Oven shoves the target back and leaves it burning.
Gingerbread Witch
The witch from “Hansel and Gretel”. In the Grimms’ words her house is made of bread, with a roof of cake and windows of clear sugar, built only to lure children inside so she can cook and eat them. She has red eyes and cannot see far, but she smells like an animal when someone is near. Later retellings turned her house into gingerbread, and the name stuck.
In Muster: tier 4, Wild, Witch, Glutton. Sweet Lure makes foes walk to her before she strikes, just as the sugar house drew the children in.
Magic Mirror
From the Grimms’ “Snow White” (1812). The queen owns a mirror that can only tell the truth, and every day she asks it who is the fairest in the land. For years it answers that she is, until the day it names Snow White instead, and that answer sets the whole tale in motion.
In Muster: tier 2, Noble, Relic, Cursed. Mirror, Mirror makes an ally reflect the damage it takes; a mirror can only give back what it is shown.
Snow White
From the Grimms’ “Snow White” (1812). A princess with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as ebony flees the jealous queen and keeps house for seven dwarfs who mine the mountains. The queen finds her three times in disguise, with tight laces, a poisoned comb and finally a poisoned apple. The dwarfs lay her in a glass coffin, and when a prince’s servants stumble while carrying it away, the bite of apple falls from her throat and she wakes.
In Muster: tier 3, Wild, Princess, Shifter. Seven Dwarfs calls her friends from the mountain to fight at her side.
Evil Queen
Snow White’s enemy in the Grimms’ tale. In the first edition of 1812 she is Snow White’s own mother; from 1819 on the Grimms made her a stepmother. Her poisoned apple is her cleverest trick: only the red half is poisoned, so she can bite the white half herself to win Snow White’s trust. At Snow White’s wedding she is made to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she falls down dead.
In Muster: tier 4, Noble, Crown, Witch. Poisoned Apple deals damage, keeps poisoning and spoils the target’s healing.
The Huntsman
Two Grimm huntsmen, both on the side of the children. In “Snow White” the queen orders a huntsman to kill the girl and bring back her lungs and liver; he takes pity on her, lets her run into the forest and brings back those of a young boar instead. In “Little Red Cap” a huntsman passing the grandmother’s house hears the wolf snoring, cuts open its belly and gets Little Red Cap and her grandmother out alive.
In Muster: tier 3, Wild, Hunter x2. Marked Shot hits the farthest foe and ignores armor: a hunter who never misses his mark.
Rapunzel
From the Grimms’ “Rapunzel” (1812), itself based on a French tale of 1698. A man steals rampion (rapunzel, a salad plant) from an enchantress’s garden for his pregnant wife and has to promise her the child. The enchantress shuts the girl in a tower with no door, and climbs up her long braids whenever she calls out for Rapunzel to let down her hair. A prince learns the trick; when the enchantress finds out, she cuts off the braids, the prince is blinded by thorns, and years later Rapunzel’s tears give him back his sight.
In Muster: tier 3, Noble, Princess, Cursed. Hair Lasso pulls the farthest foe in and roots it, like the braids that pulled visitors up the tower.
Rumpelstiltskin
From the Grimms’ “Rumpelstiltskin” (1812). A miller boasts that his daughter can spin straw into gold, and the king locks her in a room full of straw. A little man spins it into gold for her necklace, then her ring, and on the third night for her firstborn child. When he comes for the baby, he gives the queen three days to guess his name; a messenger overhears him singing it by a fire in the woods, and when she says it, he tears himself in two in rage.
In Muster: tier 4, Trickster, Witch, Gold. Straw to Gold turns the target to gold for a few seconds, and gold takes more damage.
Pied Piper
A German legend from Hamelin, where a town record tells that 130 children vanished on June 26, 1284. The Grimms retold it in their German Legends (1816), and Robert Browning made it famous in English in 1842. A piper in a coat of many colors promises to rid the town of rats, plays his pipe and leads them all into the river Weser; when the town refuses to pay him, he comes back, plays again, and leads the children away into a mountain, never to be seen again.
In Muster: tier 3, Wanderer, Trickster, Predator. Pied Tune charms the nearest foes into following the music.
Charles Perrault’s tales
The French writer Charles Perrault published eight prose tales in 1697 as Stories or Tales from Past Times, better known as Mother Goose Tales. They gave the world its best-known versions of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood and Bluebeard, each ending with a little moral in verse.
Puss in Boots
From Perrault’s “The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots” (1697), with older Italian versions by Straparola (1550s) and Basile (1634). A miller’s youngest son inherits only a cat, but the cat asks for a pair of boots and a bag and goes to work. He brings the king rabbits and partridges from “the Marquis of Carabas”, hides his master’s clothes while he bathes in the river so the king dresses him in fine ones, and tells the peasants to say all the land belongs to the Marquis. Finally he tricks an ogre into turning into a mouse and eats him, and his master gets the ogre’s castle and marries the princess.
In Muster: tier 2, Beast, Trickster, Crown. Sly Strike is a crafty critical hit that also strips armor, the way the cat got his master out of his clothes and into a lord’s.
The Ogre
The shape-shifting ogre of “Puss in Boots”. He is the richest lord in the land, and the cat flatters him into showing off: first he turns into a lion, so frightening that the cat scrambles onto the roof, slipping on the tiles in his boots. Then the cat dares him to become something as small as a mouse, and gobbles him up. Perrault has another ogre, a child-eater with seven-league boots, in “Hop-o’-My-Thumb”.
In Muster: tier 5, Giant, Glutton, Shifter, the Ace of Gluttons. Lion Form is the ogre’s own trick, and he is wise enough to stay a lion.
Cinderella
From Perrault’s “Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper” (1697). Her stepmother and stepsisters make her a servant who sleeps in the cinders. Her fairy godmother sends her to the prince’s ball in fine clothes but warns her that the magic ends at midnight; on the second night she runs off at the last stroke and loses a glass slipper, and the prince finds her by it. The Grimms’ “Aschenputtel” (1812) has a magic hazel tree and birds instead of a godmother, and the story is told around the world, with versions going back to 9th-century China.
In Muster: tier 3, Noble, Princess, Pair. Stroke of Midnight stuns everyone close, as the clock froze the whole ball.
Fairy Godmother
Cinderella’s helper, Perrault’s own addition to the tale. With a tap of her wand she turns a pumpkin into a golden coach, six mice into horses, a rat into a coachman and six lizards into footmen, and dresses Cinderella in cloth of gold and silver. The magic lasts until midnight, which is the whole point of the story.
In Muster: tier 5, Fairy, Noble, Relic, the Ace of Fairies. Pumpkin Coach heals and cleanses her allies and turns nearby foes into mice for a moment.
Sleeping Beauty
From Perrault’s “The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” (1697), with older roots in Basile’s “Sun, Moon, and Talia” (1634); the Grimms told it as “Little Briar Rose” (1812). An offended fairy curses a baby princess to prick her finger on a spindle and die; a good fairy softens it to a sleep of a hundred years. When the curse comes true, the whole castle falls asleep with her, and a wood (in the Grimms, a hedge of thorns) grows around it until a prince comes at the right time.
In Muster: tier 3, Noble, Princess, Fairy. Spindle Sleep puts the nearest foes to sleep with her.
Wicked Fairy
The uninvited guest at Sleeping Beauty’s christening. In Perrault she is an old fairy left off the guest list because everyone thought she was dead or enchanted; in the Grimms she is the thirteenth wise woman, left out because the king has only twelve golden plates. Insulted, she lays the deadly spindle curse on the baby. In the Grimms’ version a hedge of briar roses then grows around the castle, and many princes die caught in its thorns.
In Muster: tier 4, Fairy, Witch, Noble. Thorn Curse raises a patch of thorns that roots and hurts the foes inside it.
Bluebeard
From Perrault’s “Bluebeard” (1697). A rich man with a frightening blue beard marries a young wife and, before a journey, gives her all his keys, forbidding her to open one small room. She opens it and finds the bodies of his former wives; she drops the key in the blood, and the stain will not come off because the key is magic. Bluebeard returns and is about to kill her when her brothers arrive and run him through. Perrault never counts the wives or the doors; later retellings gave him seven of each.
In Muster: tier 4, Noble, Crown, Cursed. Seventh Key deals pure damage that nothing reduces, like a stain no scrubbing can remove.
Little Red Riding Hood
From Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood” (1697) and the Grimms’ “Little Red Cap” (1812). A little girl carries food to her grandmother through the woods and tells a wolf where she is going. The wolf gets there first and takes the grandmother’s place in bed, and the girl remarks on his big eyes, big ears and big teeth. Perrault’s tale ends with the wolf eating her, as a warning to young girls; in the Grimms’, a huntsman cuts them both out of the wolf’s belly.
In Muster: tier 2, Wild, Child, Wanderer. What Big Eyes marks a foe so her allies hit it harder, all the better to see it with.
Big Bad Wolf
The wolf of several tales at once: “Little Red Riding Hood”, the English “Three Little Pigs” and the Grimms’ “The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids” (1812). In the last one, the wolf disguises his voice with chalk and his paws with flour, gets into a goat’s house and swallows six kids whole. Their mother cuts him open while he sleeps, the kids jump out alive, and she fills his belly with stones so that he falls into the well.
In Muster: tier 3, Wild, Predator, Glutton. Gobble swallows a weakened foe whole, as wolves in these tales always do.
Hans Christian Andersen
The Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen did not collect folk tales so much as write new ones, from 1835 on. They are often sad, and they are some of the most famous stories ever written. Eight Muster figures come from five of them.
Steadfast Tin Soldier
From “The Steadfast Tin Soldier” (1838). Twenty-five tin soldiers were cast from one old spoon, and the last one ran out of tin and has only one leg. He falls in love with a paper ballerina standing on one leg, and a jealous goblin in a snuffbox curses him. He falls out of a window, sails down a gutter in a paper boat, is swallowed by a fish and, by chance, comes back to the same house, where a boy throws him into the stove. The ballerina blows into the fire after him, and in the morning all that is left of him is a little tin heart.
In Muster: tier 1, Toy, Pair, Noble. Stand Fast makes him unshakable, as steadfast as he stood through every trial.
Swan Prince
From “The Wild Swans” (1838), with a German cousin in the Grimms’ “The Six Swans”. A wicked queen turns her eleven stepsons into swans that may be men only at night. Their sister Elisa can break the spell only by knitting them shirts of stinging nettles, without speaking a word until she is done. Accused of witchcraft, she keeps knitting on the way to the stake; the swans swoop down, she throws the shirts over them, and they become princes again, all but the youngest, whose shirt was missing a sleeve, so he keeps one swan’s wing.
In Muster: tier 1, Shifter, Beast, Cursed. Wing Gust knocks the nearest foe back with a beat of those swan wings.
Thumbelina
From “Thumbelina” (1835). A woman who longs for a child plants a barleycorn, and a tiny girl no bigger than a thumb is born inside a flower. She is carried off by a toad who wants her for her son, then by a cockchafer, and spends the winter with a field mouse who wants her to marry a rich, gloomy mole. She nurses a frozen swallow back to life, and in spring the swallow flies her south to the land of flower fairies, where she marries their prince.
In Muster: tier 2, Child, Pair, Fairy. Petal Mend heals and cleanses an ally, as she nursed the swallow back to health.
Little Mermaid
From “The Little Mermaid” (1837). The youngest daughter of the sea king falls in love with a human prince whom she saves from a shipwreck. She trades her voice to the sea witch for legs, though every step feels like walking on knives, but the prince marries another. She cannot bring herself to kill him to save her own life, throws herself into the sea and turns to foam, and rises as one of the daughters of the air.
In Muster: tier 2, Aquatic, Princess, Shifter. Tide Call sends a wave rolling over her foes.
Sea Witch
The witch of “The Little Mermaid”, who lives deep in the sea in a house built of drowned sailors’ bones. She mixes the potion that gives the mermaid legs and takes her voice as payment by cutting out her tongue. Later she sells the mermaid’s sisters a knife for their hair: if the mermaid kills the prince with it, she can come back to the sea.
In Muster: tier 4, Aquatic, Witch, Predator. Steal the Voice silences the foes around her target and drains their mana.
Snow Queen
From “The Snow Queen” (1844), a tale in seven stories. A troll makes a mirror that shows only the ugly side of everything, and it shatters into splinters. The Snow Queen, ruler of the ice and winter, carries a boy named Kai away on her sleigh to her palace in the far north, kisses him so that he no longer feels the cold and sets him to spell out the word “Eternity” with pieces of ice.
In Muster: tier 5, Frost, Noble, Witch, the Ace of Frost. Eternal Winter freezes every foe near her.
Kai
The boy in “The Snow Queen”. Two splinters of the troll’s mirror fly into his eye and his heart, and the kind boy turns cold and mocking, sees only faults in everything, and follows the Snow Queen without a backward glance. In her palace he sits blue with cold, trying to solve the puzzle of ice that would set him free.
In Muster: tier 2, Frost, Child, Cursed. Mirror Shard makes his next blow sharper and chilling.
Gerda
Kai’s friend and the real hero of “The Snow Queen”. She sets out barefoot to find him, through a sorceress’s garden, a palace, a robbers’ castle (where a robber girl gives her a reindeer) and the frozen north. When she finds Kai, she weeps warm tears onto his chest that melt the ice in his heart; he weeps the splinter out of his eye, and they go home grown up but still children at heart.
In Muster: tier 2, Frost, Child, Wanderer. Warm Tears heals an ally and frees one that is in trouble, as she freed Kai.
English folk tales
Three Muster figures come from English nursery tales, written down from oral telling in the 17th to 19th centuries and best known from Joseph Jacobs’s English Fairy Tales (1890).
Three Little Pigs
An English folk tale, printed in the 19th century and best known from Jacobs’s 1890 collection. Three pigs leave home and build houses of straw, sticks and bricks. The wolf blows the first two houses down and eats their builders, but he cannot blow down the brick house, and when he climbs down its chimney, he falls into the third pig’s boiling pot.
In Muster: tier 1, Humble, Beast x2. Brick House raises a barrier and makes the foes next to them attack them: the house that held.
Tom Thumb
The tiny hero of “The History of Tom Thumb” (1621), the oldest fairy tale printed in English, in which he is a knight at King Arthur’s court. The Grimms have his German cousin, Thumbling, who drives a cart from inside a horse’s ear, is swallowed by a cow and a wolf, and in another tale sets out into the world with a sewing needle for a sword. He hides anywhere: in a mouse hole, a snail shell or a horse’s ear. Perrault’s “Hop-o’-My-Thumb” is a different little hero.
In Muster: tier 2, Wild, Child, Trickster. Needle Stab uses that needle sword, and he hides for a moment, as small as he is.
Beanstalk Giant
From “Jack and the Beanstalk”, first printed in 1734 and best known from Benjamin Tabart (1807) and Jacobs (1890). Jack trades the family cow for magic beans, and a beanstalk grows up to a giant’s castle in the clouds. The giant smells him at once with his famous rhyme, “Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman”, but his wife hides Jack in the oven. Jack steals a bag of gold, a hen that lays golden eggs and a golden harp, and when the giant climbs down after him, Jack chops the beanstalk and the giant falls to his death.
In Muster: tier 4, Giant x2, Glutton. Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum is a stomp that shakes everyone close, as he did whenever he came home hungry.
East Slavic tales (from swampland, Ukraine and Belarus)
Most of these tales were written down in the 19th century, above all by Alexander Afanasyev, whose great collection of folk tales (1855-1863) is the swampland answer to the Grimms. Many of them are told in Ukraine and Belarus too, with small changes. Zmey Gorynych comes from the byliny, the old epic songs about the heroes of Kyivan Rus.
Kolobok
An East Slavic tale told in swampland, Ukraine and Belarus and printed by Afanasyev. An old woman scrapes the flour bin to bake a round loaf, a kolobok, and sets it on the windowsill to cool. It rolls away and, singing a little song about how it escaped grandpa and grandma, gets past a hare, a wolf and a bear. Then a fox pretends to be deaf, asks it to sing closer, closer, on her nose, and eats it. The same runaway is the Norwegian pancake and the American Gingerbread Man, first printed in 1875.
In Muster: tier 1, Humble, Trickster, Fool. Roll Away rolls him straight through a line of foes.
Snow Maiden
From the swampland tale “Snegurochka”, printed by Afanasyev. A childless old couple shape a little girl out of snow, and she comes to life. She is lovely and gentle, but as spring comes she grows sad, and in summer, when her friends jump over a bonfire, she jumps too and melts into a little white cloud. Alexander Ostrovsky’s play of 1873 made her the daughter of Frost and Spring, and today she is Father Frost’s granddaughter in the New Year tradition.
In Muster: tier 1, Frost, Child, Cursed. Frostbite freezes her target.
Father Frost
The frost spirit of the swampland tale “Morozko”, printed by Afanasyev. A stepmother sends her stepdaughter into the winter forest to freeze; Morozko leaps through the fir trees above her and asks her again and again if she is warm. She politely says yes each time, and he rewards her with furs and a chest of treasure. When the stepmother sends her own rude daughter, Morozko freezes her solid. In the 20th century he became Ded Moroz, the bringer of New Year gifts.
In Muster: tier 4, Frost, Crown, Humble. Blizzard brings his cold down on a patch of foes.
Frog Princess
From the swampland tale “The Frog Princess”, printed by Afanasyev and told in Ukraine as well. Three princes shoot arrows to find their brides, and the youngest, Ivan, finds his in a swamp, held by a frog. The frog is really Vasilisa the Wise, who bakes the best bread and weaves the finest carpet, and at the tsar’s feast she waves her sleeves and makes a lake with swans appear. Ivan burns her frog skin too soon, she is carried off by Koschei the Deathless, and Ivan has to go to the end of the world to win her back.
In Muster: tier 3, Aquatic, Princess, Shifter. Swamp turns the ground into her home swamp.
Prince Ivan
Ivan Tsarevich, the youngest prince who is the hero of countless swampland tales. In “Ivan Tsarevich, the Firebird and the Grey Wolf”, printed by Afanasyev, he goes after the bird that steals golden apples from his father’s garden. A grey wolf eats his horse and then serves him instead, carrying him on its back and changing shape to trick the kings who set him tasks. Ivan wins the Firebird, a horse with a golden mane and Elena the Beautiful, but his jealous brothers kill him, and the wolf brings him back with the water of death and the water of life.
In Muster: tier 3, Crown, Wanderer, Pair. Sword Sweep is a prince’s sword stroke; Pair, for the grey wolf at his side.
Firebird
The glowing bird of the same swampland tale, whose feathers shine with a light that fills a room. It comes at night to steal the golden apples of the tsar’s garden, and Ivan catches only a single feather at first. When he tries to take its golden cage as well, he is caught, and the quest that follows takes the whole tale.
In Muster: tier 3, Beast, Relic, Gold. Blazing Feather sets a line of foes on fire, and the Firebird rises once again after falling, a nod to its fiery cousins, the phoenix among them, and to Ivan’s own return from the dead.
Baba Yaga
The great witch of Slavic folklore, in many tales printed by Afanasyev, among them “Vasilisa the Beautiful”. She lives deep in the forest in a hut that stands on chicken legs and turns at a word, behind a fence of bones topped with skulls. She has a bony leg, flies in a mortar, steers with the pestle and sweeps away her tracks with a broom. She eats people, but if you are brave and polite she may help you: she gives Vasilisa a skull lantern whose burning eyes destroy her cruel stepfamily.
In Muster: tier 4, Humble, Witch, Glutton. Hut on Chicken Legs calls her hut onto the field to take the blows.
Zmey Gorynych
The dragon of the byliny, the old epic songs, most of all the song of Dobrynya Nikitich. He breathes fire and lives in the mountains. He attacks Dobrynya while the hero bathes in the river Puchai and swears never to come back after losing, then breaks his word and carries off the niece of Prince Vladimir of Kyiv. Dobrynya fights him for three days and nights and kills him. In folk tales he is the classic three-headed (or six, nine, twelve-headed) serpent that heroes fight at a bridge over a river of fire.
In Muster: tier 5, Predator, Glutton, Aquatic, the Ace of Predators. Triple Breath is a cone of fire, one breath for each head.
Koschei the Deathless
The immortal sorcerer of swampland tales such as “Marya Morevna” and “The Death of Koschei the Deathless”, printed by Afanasyev. He cannot be killed because his death is hidden: in a needle, inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a hare, in an iron chest buried under an oak on a distant island. In “Marya Morevna” a prince finds him chained in a forbidden room and gives him water to drink; Koschei breaks free, steals the prince’s wife and later cuts the prince to pieces, and the prince’s bird brothers-in-law bring him back to life. The prologue Alexander Pushkin added to Ruslan and Ludmila in 1828 gives the line everyone knows: Koschei wastes away over his gold.
In Muster: tier 5, Crown, Cursed, Gold, the Ace of Gold. Deathless Grip holds a foe fast, and he rises again once after he falls, as deathless as ever.
Ukrainian folk tales
These tales were written down by Ukrainian collectors in the 19th century and are still read to every child in Ukraine. Several have swampland and Belarusian cousins.
Telesyk
From the Ukrainian tale “Telesyk” (also “Ivasyk-Telesyk”). A childless old couple carve a little boy from a log, and he comes to life. He fishes from a little boat, and his mother calls him to shore with a song. A witch (a she-serpent in some versions) learns the song, but her voice is too rough, so she has a smith forge her throat thin, lures him in and takes him home to be roasted. Telesyk tricks the witch’s daughter onto the oven shovel and into the oven instead, hides up a tree, and a flock of geese carries him home on their wings.
In Muster: tier 1, Humble, Child, Trickster. Hush silences its target, the cure for a false voice.
The Mitten
From the Ukrainian tale “The Mitten” (“Rukavychka”). An old man drops his mitten in the winter forest. A mouse moves in, then a frog, a hare, a fox, a wolf, a boar and finally a bear, each asking to be let in and each squeezing in somehow, until the mitten is about to burst. Then the old man’s dog comes back barking, the animals scatter, and the old man picks up his mitten.
In Muster: tier 1, Humble, Relic x2. Room for One More shields the allies around it, as the mitten sheltered everyone who asked.
Sirko the Hound
From the Ukrainian tale “Sirko”. A farmer drives out his old dog, who is too old to guard the house. In the forest Sirko meets a wolf, and they make a plan: the wolf snatches the farmer’s baby from the field during the harvest, and Sirko gives chase, so the wolf drops the child. The grateful family takes Sirko back and feeds him well, and he repays the wolf by sneaking him under the table at a family wedding feast.
In Muster: tier 1, Humble, Beast, Hunter. Fetch leaps at the weakest foe, as Sirko leapt after the wolf.
Sister Fox
From the Ukrainian tale “Sister Fox and Brother Wolf”, told in swampland too and printed by Afanasyev. The fox plays dead on the road, an old man throws her onto his sledge of fish, and she throws the fish off one by one and slips away. When the wolf asks for some fish, she tells him to dip his tail into a hole in the ice and wait; it freezes fast and the village women beat him. Then she smears dough on her head, claims she was beaten worse, and rides home on the wolf’s back.
In Muster: tier 2, Wild, Witch, Trickster. Fox Fire jumps from foe to foe, the way her tricks jump from one victim to the next.
Kotyhoroshko
From the Ukrainian tale “Kotyhoroshko” (“Rolling Pea”). A serpent carries off a family’s daughter, and her brothers who go after her are captured too. Their mother swallows a pea that rolls along the road and gives birth to a boy of great strength. He has a smith forge him a huge iron mace, throws it into the sky to test it and catches it as it falls, then kills the serpent and frees his sister and brothers.
In Muster: tier 3, Giant, Humble, Hunter. Pea Mace brings that mace down on a crowd.
Kyrylo the Tanner
From the Ukrainian legend of Kyrylo Kozhumiaka, the tanner of Kyiv, written down in the 19th century. A serpent holds Kyiv in tribute and has carried off the prince’s daughter, and the only man strong enough to fight him is a tanner who once tore a dozen hides in two when he was startled. He wraps himself in hemp (straw in some versions) smeared with tar, takes a heavy mace and beats the serpent. Some versions tie the fight to the Serpent’s Ramparts, ancient earthworks south of Kyiv, and the Primary Chronicle (early 1100s) tells of a young tanner’s son who beat a Pecheneg champion in 992.
In Muster: tier 4, Hunter, Giant, Humble. Hide Wrap stuns the target and gives him armor, a nod to the tarred hemp the serpent could not bite through.
One Thousand and One Nights
The Nights are a medieval collection of tales in Arabic, with roots in Persian and Indian storytelling, told by Scheherazade night after night to stay alive. Some of the most famous ones, Aladdin and Ali Baba among them, were first published by the French translator Antoine Galland (1704-1717), who heard them from the Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab.
Ali Baba
From “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves”, published by Galland in 1717. A poor woodcutter overhears forty thieves open their treasure cave with the words “Open, Sesame!” and helps himself to their gold. His greedy brother forgets the words to get out and is killed, and the thieves come after Ali Baba, hidden in oil jars in his yard. His clever servant Morgiana finds them and kills them with boiling oil, then unmasks their captain.
In Muster: tier 2, Gold, Trickster, Wanderer. Forty Thieves calls some of those thieves to strike from behind.
Aladdin
From “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp”, published by Galland in 1712 and set, surprisingly, in a city in China. A sorcerer from the Maghreb sends the poor boy Aladdin into a cave to fetch an old lamp, and Aladdin ends up with the lamp, its genie and a magic ring. He marries the sultan’s daughter and builds her a palace overnight, then loses everything when the sorcerer trades “new lamps for old” and has the genie fly the palace to Africa. There is no flying carpet in Aladdin’s tale: the famous carpet belongs to Prince Husain in another tale from Galland’s book.
In Muster: tier 3, Gold, Trickster, Pair. Magic Carpet flies him straight at the strongest foe, borrowing the Nights’ most famous ride.
Genie
The genie of the lamp from Aladdin’s tale, an enormous spirit who must serve whoever holds the lamp. He brings Aladdin food on silver plates, treasure, a palace and the princess herself. In the original he grants as many wishes as his master likes; the limit of three wishes belongs to other folk tales. The giant jinni in the Nights’ “The Fisherman and the Jinni”, who rises from a sealed jar like a cloud of smoke, shows how big these spirits can be.
In Muster: tier 4, Relic, Giant, Gold. Three Wishes grants three gifts in turn: healing, stuns and attack speed.
The Roc
The giant bird of Sinbad the Sailor’s voyages, in Galland’s Nights. On his second voyage, Sinbad ties himself to the leg of a sleeping roc and is carried off to a valley of diamonds. On his fifth, his shipmates break open a roc’s egg the size of a dome, and the parents chase the ship and sink it with boulders dropped from the sky. The roc is older than Sinbad, from Persian and Arabic lore, and Marco Polo heard tales of it in the 13th century.
In Muster: tier 5, Beast, Aquatic, Hunter, the Ace of Hunters. Talon Dive drops from the sky onto the thickest crowd, like a boulder onto a ship.
L. Frank Baum’s Oz
L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), illustrated by W. W. Denslow, is often called the first American fairy tale. Nine Muster figures come from the book, which is in some places quite different from the films made of it later.
Dorothy
A girl from the prairies of Kansas who lives with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry and her little dog Toto. A cyclone carries their house to the land of Oz, where it lands on the Wicked Witch of the East and kills her. Dorothy takes the witch’s silver shoes and walks the road of yellow brick to the Emerald City to ask the Wizard to send her home. At the end, Glinda tells her that the silver shoes could have taken her home from the first day.
In Muster: tier 3, Child, Relic, Fool. Twister lifts foes into a whirlwind, like the cyclone that started it all.
Munchkins
The little people of the blue Munchkin Country in the east of Oz. When Dorothy’s house kills the Wicked Witch of the East, who kept them in bondage, they greet her with the Good Witch of the North as a great sorceress. A rich Munchkin named Boq gives a feast in her honor, with fiddlers playing and the people singing and dancing.
In Muster: tier 1, Child, Fool, Wanderer. Welcome Song heals the weakest allies.
Scarecrow
A scarecrow stuffed with straw whom Dorothy lifts off his pole in a cornfield. He wants a brain, and turns out to be the cleverest of the friends long before the Wizard fills his head with bran, pins and needles. When the Wicked Witch of the West sends a swarm of black bees, he has the Tin Woodman cover Dorothy, Toto and the Lion with his straw, and the bees find no one to sting but the tin man. At the end he becomes ruler of the Emerald City.
In Muster: tier 2, Wanderer, Fool x2. Straw Taunt makes nearby foes attack him, and he shrugs off part of the damage, as only a man of straw can.
Tin Woodman
Once a Munchkin woodman named Nick Chopper. The Wicked Witch of the East enchanted his axe to stop him marrying, and it cut off his limbs one by one, until a tinsmith had replaced all of him with tin, leaving him no heart. Dorothy finds him rusted solid in the forest and oils his joints. On the road he chops the tree bridge under the clawed Kalidahs and cuts down the forty wolves sent by the Witch of the West.
In Muster: tier 3, Wild, Toy, Hunter. Timber! is one heavy blow of the axe, and his attacks cleave.
Cowardly Lion
A lion who roars to scare everyone because he is afraid of everything. He joins Dorothy to ask the Wizard for courage, even though he keeps proving brave on the road, leaping across a great ditch with the friends on his back. The Wizard gives him a green drink and tells him it is courage. Afterward he kills a giant spider that terrorizes a forest and becomes King of the Beasts.
In Muster: tier 3, Beast, Fool, Wild. Roar scares the nearby foes away, then he finds his courage and hits harder.
Flying Monkeys
The Winged Monkeys of Oz must obey whoever owns the Golden Cap, three times each. The Wicked Witch of the West uses them to snatch Dorothy, scatter the Scarecrow’s straw, drop the Tin Woodman on the rocks and cage the Lion. Dorothy later wears the cap herself, and Glinda frees the monkeys by giving the cap to their king.
In Muster: tier 1, Predator, Beast, Cursed. Snatch flies at the most dangerous foe and stuns it.
Wicked Witch of the West
The witch who rules the yellow Winkie Country and has only one eye, as strong as a telescope. She sends wolves, crows, bees and her Winkie soldiers against Dorothy and her friends, then the Winged Monkeys, and makes Dorothy her servant. She steals one silver shoe by tripping Dorothy with an invisible bar, and Dorothy throws a bucket of water at her in anger; the witch melts away. In the book she carries an old umbrella, not a broom.
In Muster: tier 4, Witch, Predator, Crown. Broom Fire hands her the classic witch’s broom and sets a line of foes alight.
The Wizard
The great and terrible Oz, who receives each visitor in a different shape: a great head, a lovely lady, a terrible beast and a ball of fire. In truth he is a humbug, a balloonist from Omaha who drifted to Oz and let the people think him a wizard, and the Emerald City only looks green because everyone wears green spectacles. He gives the friends a brain of bran, a silk heart and a drink of courage, and floats away in his balloon without Dorothy.
In Muster: tier 4, Trickster, Gold, Shifter. Smoke and Mirrors hides him and puts up the great head instead.
Glinda
Glinda the Good, the Witch of the South, who rules the Quadling Country and is the most powerful witch in Oz. She is the one who tells Dorothy the secret of the silver shoes, sends each of her friends to his new kingdom with the Golden Cap, and then sets the Winged Monkeys free. In the book, the good witch who meets Dorothy when she first lands is a different one, the Witch of the North, whose kiss on Dorothy’s forehead protects her from harm.
In Muster: tier 5, Fairy, Noble, Relic, the Ace of Nobles. Bubble makes the weakest allies untouchable for a moment, as safe as Dorothy under a good witch’s kiss.
Toys that come to life: Hoffmann and Collodi
Two German and Italian books about toys who have a life of their own: E. T. A. Hoffmann’s “Nutcracker and Mouse King” (1816), later retold by Alexandre Dumas and set to music by Tchaikovsky, and Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883).
Nutcracker
From Hoffmann’s “Nutcracker and Mouse King”. On Christmas Eve, young Marie Stahlbaum adopts a homely wooden nutcracker; her brother breaks it cracking a hard nut. At midnight the toys come to life and the Nutcracker leads them in battle against the army of mice. He is really the nephew of Marie’s godfather, cursed by the Mouse Queen; Marie’s love and courage break the spell, and he takes her to his kingdom of dolls.
In Muster: tier 2, Toy, Pair, Shifter. Crack is a nut-cracking blow that stuns; Pair, for Marie.
Mouse King
The Nutcracker’s enemy, a mouse with seven heads, each wearing a crown. In the midnight battle Marie saves the Nutcracker by throwing her slipper at him. Afterward he comes to her at night and threatens to bite the Nutcracker to pieces unless she gives him her sweets and her toys, until she gets the Nutcracker a sword and he kills the Mouse King and brings Marie the seven crowns.
In Muster: tier 4, Predator, Crown, Toy. Royal Gnaw bites and strips armor, and his attacks hit several foes at once, one for each hungry head.
Drosselmeyer
Marie’s godfather, Councillor Drosselmeier, a strange little man with a black patch over one eye and a wig of glass, who is also a master clockmaker. Every Christmas he builds the children a mechanical wonder, such as a castle with tiny ladies and gentlemen walking through its halls. In the tale within the tale, “The Hard Nut”, he tells how his nephew became the Nutcracker.
In Muster: tier 5, Toy, Pair, Frost, the Ace of Toys. Grand Wind-Up winds up the whole side for faster attacks, as a clockmaker would.
Pinocchio
From Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, a magazine serial (1881-1883) and then a book in 1883. The old woodcarver Geppetto carves a puppet from a log that can already talk, and the puppet runs off at once. Pinocchio is cheated by the Fox and the Cat, and his nose grows each time he lies to the Fairy with Turquoise Hair, until he cannot turn around in the room. He is turned into a donkey in the Land of Toys and swallowed by a giant dogfish, where he finds Geppetto, and at last he becomes a real boy.
In Muster: tier 3, Toy, Fool, Shifter. Nose Lance grows his nose into a lance through a line of foes.
Alpine folklore
Krampus
A horned, hairy figure of the Alpine Christmas season in Austria, Bavaria, South Tyrol and their neighbors. He goes from house to house with St. Nicholas on the night of December 5: the saint brings gifts to good children, and Krampus rattles his chains, swats with his birch switches and threatens to carry off the naughty ones in his sack or basket. He is not from a single tale but a centuries-old folk custom, still alive in the Krampus runs of Alpine towns.
In Muster: tier 5, Frost, Predator, Cursed, the Ace of Cursed. Sack bags his target for a few seconds and hits it hard when it comes out.
Back to the bookshop
Now you know who is on the page: a donkey band from Germany, a Kyiv tanner, a clockwork godfather and a deathless sorcerer. Pick your favorite tale and build a crew from it, or mix them all. Play Pixel Muster, or read the Pixel Muster guide for gold, stars and alliances.