Baba Yaga (Cooking Companions) (2024)

Baba Yaga, also known as the Butcher of Hope, is the main protagonist of the 2021 horror visual novel Cooking Companions and set to be the main antagonist of its upcoming sequel, Dread Weight.

While at first she seems to be as much of an innocent victim as the rest of the main cast (minus Karin), several clues throughout the game suggest that she in fact plays a much more important and sinister role in the game's story than it seems at first glance. It's later revealed that, along with being an evil, cannibalistic witch who owns the cabin that the group stays at, she's responsible for just about every terrible thing that happens during the story, both in the past and present.

Biography[]

Past[]

Baba Yaga has lived incredibly long before the events of the game, implicitly via eternal life that she sustains by eating human flesh. At some point around 1862, she took on an apprentice who was the serial killer known as the Butcher of Zakopane, wishing to learn Baga Yaga's "secret" and leading victims to her in the hopes of gaining her favor. One group of these victims were four children named Celina, Ryna, Bolek and Oleg, also friends of one of Baba Yaga's previous victims, a young boy named Razael.

After the Butcher chased the children into Baba Yaga's cabin and cornered them, she suddenly appeared from behind and killed the entire group at once, including the Butcher. These five then became spirits in the shape of food, eternally bound to the cabin until Baba Yaga chooses to let them pass on. Celina became Cabbage, Ryna became Raspberry, Bolek became Bread, Oleg became Onion and the Butcher became Potato.

Cooking Companions[]

The story begins with a group of four friends, Karin, Mariah, Anatoly and Gregor, wandering through the woods and seeking shelter in Baba Yaga's cabin, which they at first presumed to be abandoned. The group are met face-to-face with Baba Yaga, the sight of her appearance filling them with horror although they still don't seem to understand the full grasp of their situation, and they ask if they can stay at her cabin for a while. Baba Yaga asks if they came on their own or if they were sent, to which they answer "incorrectly". The group eventually calms down, or puts on a show of calming down, and they cheerfully settle into their roles, designating Baba Yaga as their cook.

During the first few days of their stay, Baba Yaga creates heavy rainfall that floods the area around the cabin and traps her soon-to-be victims inside. She also meets with the Chompettes, the spirits of her previous batch of victims, who give her advice over the course of the game. Baba Yaga at first thinks she's hallucinating their appearance, but later accepts the Chompettes' presence. Over the next days the group begins to run out of supplies and starve, forcing them to pick someone to venture outside and find supplies. The first to go is Mariah and then Anatoly, neither of whom return. Baba Yaga acquires a mysterious "meat" after each of their disappearances, presumably their flesh, and feeds it to the surviving companions, gradually driving them mad with a craving for the meat.

The most receptive to the craving for flesh is Karin, who becomes proactive after Mariah and Anatoly's deaths and ends up working with Baba Yaga to use Gregor as a food source, keeping him alive while chopping off his limbs whenever they need food. After Gregor dies from his injuries, Karin eventually turns her sights on Baba Yaga herself with her stolen knife and the latter confronts Karin in the basem*nt for a duel to the death. Baba Yaga ultimately prevails and Karin is turned into a new Chompette, Turnip.

After the fight, Baba Yaga is confronted by the ghouls of Mariah, Anatoly and Gregor, who berate her for her cruelty and urge her to turn the lights on. She obliges as the game cuts to credits.

Karin Ending[]

If the player maxes out their relationship with Karin throughout the game then instead of turning on Baba Yaga at the end, Karin will profess her love to her. The two then become partners in crime, eating countless innocent people, toppling governments and making the world a horrible place. Karin later dies of illness, much to Baba Yaga's sadness.

Abyss Ending[]

In New Game plus, if the player only ever speaks to Potato and ignores everyone else while choosing only "..." for dialogue options, then Baba Yaga meets with Potato after the fight with Karin. He congratulates her and then demands that she give back his knife, which she does. Potato then encourages Baba Yaga to leave the cabin and feed on the countless morsels out in the rest of the world rather than the companions' rotting corpses. Baba Yaga obliges, leaving the cabin under Potato's guidance and devouring the populations of countless villages. Her rampage is unstoppable and she brings a storm to every town.

Mariah Ending[]

In an alternate universe where Mariah survives until the end of the game and is the last one alive, she makes a show of falling in love with Baba Yaga much like Karin did and wanting to take care of her, but then kills her with her own knife in order to end her reign of terror once and for all.

Appearance[]

Baba Yaga's face and most of her body are never shown, but several comments and reactions from other characters imply her appearance to be monstrous, deformed and grotesque, likely in a similar manner to the other ghouls seen in the game. When the companions first meet Baba Yaga, their immediate reactions are all ones of shock and fear. Her arms as seen when she kills Karin are bony, pale and wrinkled, and she implicitly has an elderly appearance.

Personality[]

Baba Yaga is at first shown to be polite and friendly, even cooking meals for the visitors during their stay at the cabin. However, this innocent facade drops during the flood after Mariah ends up sacrificing herself in an attempt to leave the cabin and find help. She is then revealed to be cold, calculating and, of course, cannibalistic, being completely calm and comfortable while cooking human flesh and stolidly serving it to her visitors. She behaves stern and assertively with her visitors, being pleased internally when they don't object to her decisions. When Karin finally turns on Baba Yaga and attempts to kill and eat her, she ends up disarming and killing her without hesitation.

She's confirmed to have the ability to cause heavy rainfall in Dread Weight, implying she's the one who caused the flood that trapped the companions in the cabin, and slowly wears down her victims while forcing them to eat each other even though she could kill them all at any time. She also stores loads of fresh food and ingredients in her basem*nt, meaning she purposefully allows the companions to starve even though she could easily feed them. The purpose for those acts may be that she was seeking out a new apprentice to convert to her cannibalistic ways, as during Karin's descent into villainy, Baba Yaga remarks that 'she's learning quickly'. The ghouls of Mariah, Anatoly and Gregor describe Baba Yaga as a "horror", an "abomination" and a "wretch" and consider her to be evil to the point of inhumanity. This sentiment is shared by the Chompette Raspberry, who also enjoys chewing Baba Yaga out for her malevolence and makes her hatred crystal clear. Baba Yaga never objects to any of their criticisms, instead quietly accepting them.

Despite all of this, Baba Yaga isn't a completely heartless monster. She is shown to care for some people, namely Karin, who becomes her lover if her relationship is maxed out by the end of the game, and possibly Razael/Cornbread, one of her past victims and the only Chompette that she allowed to pass on. Dread Weight also mentions that her motive for attacking the mansion is seeking vengeance for someone named Ivan. Her malevolence is generally more pragmatic than sad*stic, and she even shows some level of pity at the torment that Karin puts Gregor through. She's also shown to be tired of the way she leads her life, whether this stems from remorse or simply fatigue, which Potato points out as her beginning to go soft. By the start of Dread Weight, Potato begins to take charge and starts manipulating Baba Yaga with the goal of bringing her back to her prime.