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app.
IN CHARACTER
| as the spaceship hurtles out toward the stars, the earth a star behind it, the earnest dog eyes fixed on black space like a door the masters have walked through and will return from, surely. Surely they'll come to get me. Surely they didn't love me all that time for this. โ alan shapiro, space dog. |
Character Name: Vasiliy Yegorovich Ardankin. The diminutive he has always used is Vasya, but he doesn't disclose this to people who aren't familiar with Russian nomenclature because hearing it used incorrectly really grates on his nerves.
Played-By/Art Claim: Jamie Blackley.
In-Game Tattoo Placement: Roe deer antlers at the base of his skull, exactly where the wound from his execution would be had it left one. They're mostly covered by hair, but their outline is thinly visible beneath it.
Current Health/Status: Upon arrival Vasiliy's okay-ISH. He has a lot of dark contusions on his chest and abdomen from internal bleeding and is going to be extremely sore. Breathing and moving are both going to be quite painful, but he doesn't have any broken bones or organ damage.
Age: 34.
Species: Human.
Content Warnings: Major content warnings are mentions/depictions of the Russian Yezhovshchina, violence, flashbacks to psychological manipulation (his entire role in the NKVD was to approach subjects as a sympathetic figure to talk them into signing false confessions). He's still unlearning Stalinism, so his inner thoughts aren't completely in line with reality. He drinks and smokes to a maladaptive degree, so depictions of borderline alcoholism and smoking both go with the territory, and he's also pretty much always carrying a gun.
History:
I. ONE OF THESE DAYS THESE BOOTS ARE GONNA WALK ALL OVER YOU
Vasiliy was born to a lower working class family in St. Petersburgโthen known as Petrogradโin 1910, 6 years later than Tsarevich Alexei, 7 years earlier than John F. Kennedy. He was exposed to violence and food insecurity from birth, and he was four years old at the outbreak of the First World War; his father, like thousands of other Russians, returned from the battlefront a radical Bolshevik embittered by what he'd been forced to see and experience.
Although he learned to read and perform basic math, Vasiliy received no formal education until the Party sent him to college at 27 years old; from the age of about six years he worked alongside his father, a welder. He was in Petrograd working in a factory when the 1917 women's march blossomed into multiple strikes, which demonstrated the power of collective action to him at a very young age - as well as the brutality the monarchy was capable of. By the time that Tsar Nicholas II abdicated that year, over 1,000 people had been killed in Petrograd alone, which served to desensitize Vasiliy and his peers to violence and death to a degree that is not normal.
When the Russian revolution took hold, both parents were followers of Lenin, then Stalinists-which would later be their saving grace during the purge-and raised Vasiliy with Bolshevik moral values: atheism, work ethic, stoicism, self-betterment, and willingness to sacrifice. The church had already left a sour taste in his mouth - during his time, Tsar Nicholas' rule was justified not by competence but by the institution of the church and was perceived as inseparable from the monarchy - and Bolshevik ideals of secularity were hardly a big leap.
Vasiliy started at the bottom of the party hierarchy as a local party clerk cataloguing enrollments and party cards - and by 1930, he was a member of Orgraspred, a deceptively powerful department responsible for staffing every position connected with the communist party. When Nikolai Yezhov - also an Orgraspred alum - was promoted to head of the NKVD, Vasiliy was part of the cohort that he took with him to fill the countless positions purged to clear away all of his predecessor's influence.
II. THEY'VE GIVEN YOU A NUMBER, TAKEN AWAY YOUR NAME
He started as a record-keeper in 1936; after about six months of this he was promoted to interrogations. He was initially tasked with playing the 'good cop' typical to the Soviet interrogation style because it was seen as a way to ease an outsider into the rougher work of interrogations involving physical force, but his charisma and perceptive nature made this a role that he excelled in, so there he stayed. Over the next four years Vasiliy successfully talked hundreds of fellow Soviets into signing false confessions โ a daily task he rationalized by a) telling himself that he was sparing people who were doomed anyway from being tortured and b) silencing any apprehensions with immersion in the extremely cultlike environment of the NKVD as a whole.
Without realizing it, Vasiliy became used to the mixed deference and fear civilians regarded him with. During the early Yezhovschina, the NKVD was revered and seen in a sort of extreme amplification of how soldiers were perceived in the US during the early to mid 2000s. Slowly, however, the tide turned, and when Yezhov's days as commissar became visibly numbered, so too did Vasiliy'sโand those of every other staff member he had appointed.
III. LIKE SATURN, THE REVOLUTION DEVOURS ITS CHILDREN
On a chilly April night in 1940, the knock finally came. Vasiliy was arrested in his nightclothes and shuttled to temporary holding, all while in complete shock and denial โ he had spent the last three years living in the shadow of a nebulous sort of foreboding while simultaneously believing the things he witnessed daily could never happen to him. When another interrogator assigned to play the "good cop" finally came in to question him, Vasiliy initially tried to refute the charges, all while feeling as though watching himself in a mirror. He knew the subtle tricks his own interrogator was using, he knew that the plea deal being held over his head was a mirage โ and that one way or another, his imprisonment would end with his signature on the fabricated confession he'd been presented โ so, ultimately, he falsely confessed to the standard battery of charges applied to members of the NKVD who had been unfortunate enough to outlive their usefulness: sabotage, espionage, immoral conduct.
He was executed with a single bullet to the back of the head a week later.
And then he woke up.
IV. STOP WHERE YOU STAND / YOU HAVEN'T A CLUE WHO I AM
At first he believed that he was cold from blood loss. Vasiliy kept his eyes shut and waited to die โ but seconds turned into minutes without a loss of consciousness, and when he began to feel tiny pinpricks of cold wetness on his face, he dared to open his eyes and looked up not at the cement ceiling of an execution chamber but at the pale grey sky, squinting to keep tiny snowflakes from landing in his eyes. He had, for reasons unknown, awoken exactly 75 years after his death.
Perhaps more miraculous was that he had a documented presence as a young man born in the city now known as St. Petersburg in the April of 1985. As he slowly adapted to modern life over the next two years, Vasiliy kept a low profile and trained as an EMT - then obtained a work visa and fled to America, the last place anyone who knew of his past would think to look, all the while trying to make sense of how unceremoniously he'd been disposed of and how society's perception of the Great Terror had shifted.
Three years was enough time for him to very gradually begin to unlearn his Stalinist programming; the psychological process he went through and continues to go through is highly similar to the experience of former cult members. He's an atheist, but still believes to an extent that working as an emergency medical provider is a form of balancing the harm he did in a cosmic sort of way.
Vasiliy is arriving in Deerington after dying on an EMS call on highway I-90 in Chicago, where he settled when he came to the United Statesโ while he was walking from the parked ambulance to a car that had gone into a full skid on the highway and smashed into the guardrail, another driver lost control of their vehicle and swerved in the same direction. Vasiliy was hit from behind at approximately 65 miles an hour and died of mass internal bleeding before reaching the hospital.
CRAU History & Impact: N/A
Personality: Vasiliy is, at his core, driven by a strong, morally dualistic sense of right and wrong. He's improved slightly since entering the 'modern' world, but for the most part, his worldview still has very little room for gray areas. Even abstracted from the time in which he came of age, he still wholeheartedly believes in communism, which appeals to him both because of his exposure to poverty and abuse at the hands of those who held power and because of an innate desire to protect the weak rooted in his personality. It fills much the same role as fervent religion holds for a lot of people โ political ideology is a source of emotional security and certainty for him. He finds fulfillment in work and feels it's a part of one's identity.
On an interpersonal level, Vasiliy is friendly, quiet, and confident, uncannily attuned to the body language of others and capable of being highly charismatic. He's compassionate by nature and tends to know what to say (or, at least in the case of his Anglophone friends, what sentiment to express), but despite this, many of the people who interact with him find themselves feeling as though something's ever-so-slightly not right about him. They'd be correct, of course - he came of age during a wildly different time than anything the vast majority of living people have something to truly compare with.
His wariness and unwillingness (and, often, inability) to share unnecessary details, traits which kept him alive during the Great Purge, are now perceived as unfriendliness or extreme introversion. A great deal of the impulses that were rational and understandable during his time โ answering the door with a gun tucked into his waistband, refusal to break even small laws through activities like jaywalking โ now resonate as paranoia, and they're reflective of a very real pathological lack of trust in the government. He gives police officers in particular a very wide berth because he understands their mentality to a degree that most civilians don't, and he knows from personal experience how deep corruption can run โ but this made him seem slightly 'off' and aloof in his near-daily social interactions with the police when he was an EMT during his time alive.
In general, Vasiliy does not trust quickly or easily. Reliability and sincerity have to be proven to him, but because of this, he has very few people to confide in. He wasn't raised to have the emotional skills to deal with intense distress alone, either, so he smokes and drinks in lieu of independently addressing his own feelings head-on. He's highly desensitized to violence and is very difficult to rattle, but during the few times when he does feel overwhelmed, his immediate reaction is to step outside to smoke.
Vasiliy is predisposed to value the group over the individual and is willing to make sacrifices beyond what is fair to expect of him; like most second-wave Bolsheviks, he is remarkably hard-working. He still has a few other idiosyncrasies connected to this that crop up routinely: he's humble to a self-deprecating, obviously dishonest degree and can't really take a compliment, and virtually all of his emails and lengthier messages start with an apology ("I'm sorry to bother you, but...", "I'm sorry to waste your time but I must ask...", etc.).
Vasiliy hasn't truly processed the shock, betrayal, and grief of being abruptly disposed of by the same political machine that made him feel valued because it's too much for him to take in โ while he's able to acknowledge that he was a part of a cruel and flawed system and is trying to (in his mind) repent for his role in the purge, accepting that he was just as disposable as all the members of the NKVD that came before him is too much of a disruption to his understanding of the world to be digestible. He's reached a point at which he's starting to see Stalin for what he truly was, but accepting that almost all of his reality was based on lies is extremely difficult, so it's been a very gradual process. He feels deep guilt and remorse over his role in the Great Purge, but he hasn't told anyone about this (with the exception of two close friends in Chicago) because A) he recognizes that his story sounds completely and entirely false B) telling them would involve reliving many things he tries to avoid thinking about (to include his own execution) and C) he knows it's a lot to take in if his audience does believe him.
Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping:
ABILITIES
โบ Vasiliy doesn't have any superhuman abilities, but he's uncannily, eerily good at persuading people to do things/getting others to let their guard down around him when he makes a deliberate effort to do so. He's got great unconscious control of his body language and is highly perceptive, both of which are very helpful. Despite this, he tries to avoid doing this because he sees it as a reminder of his past he'd rather leave behind.
โบ While his role in the NKVD didn't involve administering or ordering physical violence, he was still given some degree of training - so he's an excellent shot (average to below average in his larger cohort in the 30s, however) and knows how to quickly restrain and subdue people.
โบ He also has modern medical training as an EMT.
WEAKNESSES
โบ Vasiliy's major weakness didn't appear until he awoke in his 'next' life - while he doesn't display enough symptoms to be diagnosable as having post traumatic stress disorder, there are quite a few things that get to himโloud sounds, hearing people going up/down stairs if he can't see them (this is a big one), the smell of mildew, and small rooms/rooms without windows.
โบ To anyone who didn't live through the great terror or any of its foreign analogs, he's going to come off as very paranoid and generally rather weird.
โบ Vasiliy speaks English well enough to communicate basic thoughts, but his English is awkward and he struggles with articles and pronunciation to a glaringly obvious degree. He has a pretty good vocabulary and there are some phrases that frequently crop up at work that he's able to say almost perfectly. Despite all of this, he refuses to speak Russian around native speakers because he knows his Russian is very dated, identifyingly so โ the effective equivalent of a modern American speaking with a transatlantic accent and WWII-era colloquialisms.
Inventory:
- EMT uniform; black work shoes.
- Nagant m1895 revolver, the same model as his old service weapon. This one was obtained at a gun show - ironically, despite all of his attempts to distance himself from his past, he chose to carry a fairly antiquated weapon because he didn't want to leave his comfort zone. It is one of the few elements of his past he's held on to, one of the few links he found himself unable to sever.
- standard EMS duffel. There's a pretty decent breakdown of what these things have in them here. (Linked for brevity.)
- an iphone 5 in a comically protective case.
Writing Samples:
Played-By/Art Claim: Jamie Blackley.
In-Game Tattoo Placement: Roe deer antlers at the base of his skull, exactly where the wound from his execution would be had it left one. They're mostly covered by hair, but their outline is thinly visible beneath it.
Current Health/Status: Upon arrival Vasiliy's okay-ISH. He has a lot of dark contusions on his chest and abdomen from internal bleeding and is going to be extremely sore. Breathing and moving are both going to be quite painful, but he doesn't have any broken bones or organ damage.
Age: 34.
Species: Human.
Content Warnings: Major content warnings are mentions/depictions of the Russian Yezhovshchina, violence, flashbacks to psychological manipulation (his entire role in the NKVD was to approach subjects as a sympathetic figure to talk them into signing false confessions). He's still unlearning Stalinism, so his inner thoughts aren't completely in line with reality. He drinks and smokes to a maladaptive degree, so depictions of borderline alcoholism and smoking both go with the territory, and he's also pretty much always carrying a gun.
History:
I. ONE OF THESE DAYS THESE BOOTS ARE GONNA WALK ALL OVER YOU
Vasiliy was born to a lower working class family in St. Petersburgโthen known as Petrogradโin 1910, 6 years later than Tsarevich Alexei, 7 years earlier than John F. Kennedy. He was exposed to violence and food insecurity from birth, and he was four years old at the outbreak of the First World War; his father, like thousands of other Russians, returned from the battlefront a radical Bolshevik embittered by what he'd been forced to see and experience.
Although he learned to read and perform basic math, Vasiliy received no formal education until the Party sent him to college at 27 years old; from the age of about six years he worked alongside his father, a welder. He was in Petrograd working in a factory when the 1917 women's march blossomed into multiple strikes, which demonstrated the power of collective action to him at a very young age - as well as the brutality the monarchy was capable of. By the time that Tsar Nicholas II abdicated that year, over 1,000 people had been killed in Petrograd alone, which served to desensitize Vasiliy and his peers to violence and death to a degree that is not normal.
When the Russian revolution took hold, both parents were followers of Lenin, then Stalinists-which would later be their saving grace during the purge-and raised Vasiliy with Bolshevik moral values: atheism, work ethic, stoicism, self-betterment, and willingness to sacrifice. The church had already left a sour taste in his mouth - during his time, Tsar Nicholas' rule was justified not by competence but by the institution of the church and was perceived as inseparable from the monarchy - and Bolshevik ideals of secularity were hardly a big leap.
Vasiliy started at the bottom of the party hierarchy as a local party clerk cataloguing enrollments and party cards - and by 1930, he was a member of Orgraspred, a deceptively powerful department responsible for staffing every position connected with the communist party. When Nikolai Yezhov - also an Orgraspred alum - was promoted to head of the NKVD, Vasiliy was part of the cohort that he took with him to fill the countless positions purged to clear away all of his predecessor's influence.
II. THEY'VE GIVEN YOU A NUMBER, TAKEN AWAY YOUR NAME
He started as a record-keeper in 1936; after about six months of this he was promoted to interrogations. He was initially tasked with playing the 'good cop' typical to the Soviet interrogation style because it was seen as a way to ease an outsider into the rougher work of interrogations involving physical force, but his charisma and perceptive nature made this a role that he excelled in, so there he stayed. Over the next four years Vasiliy successfully talked hundreds of fellow Soviets into signing false confessions โ a daily task he rationalized by a) telling himself that he was sparing people who were doomed anyway from being tortured and b) silencing any apprehensions with immersion in the extremely cultlike environment of the NKVD as a whole.
Without realizing it, Vasiliy became used to the mixed deference and fear civilians regarded him with. During the early Yezhovschina, the NKVD was revered and seen in a sort of extreme amplification of how soldiers were perceived in the US during the early to mid 2000s. Slowly, however, the tide turned, and when Yezhov's days as commissar became visibly numbered, so too did Vasiliy'sโand those of every other staff member he had appointed.
III. LIKE SATURN, THE REVOLUTION DEVOURS ITS CHILDREN
On a chilly April night in 1940, the knock finally came. Vasiliy was arrested in his nightclothes and shuttled to temporary holding, all while in complete shock and denial โ he had spent the last three years living in the shadow of a nebulous sort of foreboding while simultaneously believing the things he witnessed daily could never happen to him. When another interrogator assigned to play the "good cop" finally came in to question him, Vasiliy initially tried to refute the charges, all while feeling as though watching himself in a mirror. He knew the subtle tricks his own interrogator was using, he knew that the plea deal being held over his head was a mirage โ and that one way or another, his imprisonment would end with his signature on the fabricated confession he'd been presented โ so, ultimately, he falsely confessed to the standard battery of charges applied to members of the NKVD who had been unfortunate enough to outlive their usefulness: sabotage, espionage, immoral conduct.
He was executed with a single bullet to the back of the head a week later.
And then he woke up.
IV. STOP WHERE YOU STAND / YOU HAVEN'T A CLUE WHO I AM
At first he believed that he was cold from blood loss. Vasiliy kept his eyes shut and waited to die โ but seconds turned into minutes without a loss of consciousness, and when he began to feel tiny pinpricks of cold wetness on his face, he dared to open his eyes and looked up not at the cement ceiling of an execution chamber but at the pale grey sky, squinting to keep tiny snowflakes from landing in his eyes. He had, for reasons unknown, awoken exactly 75 years after his death.
Perhaps more miraculous was that he had a documented presence as a young man born in the city now known as St. Petersburg in the April of 1985. As he slowly adapted to modern life over the next two years, Vasiliy kept a low profile and trained as an EMT - then obtained a work visa and fled to America, the last place anyone who knew of his past would think to look, all the while trying to make sense of how unceremoniously he'd been disposed of and how society's perception of the Great Terror had shifted.
Three years was enough time for him to very gradually begin to unlearn his Stalinist programming; the psychological process he went through and continues to go through is highly similar to the experience of former cult members. He's an atheist, but still believes to an extent that working as an emergency medical provider is a form of balancing the harm he did in a cosmic sort of way.
Vasiliy is arriving in Deerington after dying on an EMS call on highway I-90 in Chicago, where he settled when he came to the United Statesโ while he was walking from the parked ambulance to a car that had gone into a full skid on the highway and smashed into the guardrail, another driver lost control of their vehicle and swerved in the same direction. Vasiliy was hit from behind at approximately 65 miles an hour and died of mass internal bleeding before reaching the hospital.
CRAU History & Impact: N/A
Personality: Vasiliy is, at his core, driven by a strong, morally dualistic sense of right and wrong. He's improved slightly since entering the 'modern' world, but for the most part, his worldview still has very little room for gray areas. Even abstracted from the time in which he came of age, he still wholeheartedly believes in communism, which appeals to him both because of his exposure to poverty and abuse at the hands of those who held power and because of an innate desire to protect the weak rooted in his personality. It fills much the same role as fervent religion holds for a lot of people โ political ideology is a source of emotional security and certainty for him. He finds fulfillment in work and feels it's a part of one's identity.
On an interpersonal level, Vasiliy is friendly, quiet, and confident, uncannily attuned to the body language of others and capable of being highly charismatic. He's compassionate by nature and tends to know what to say (or, at least in the case of his Anglophone friends, what sentiment to express), but despite this, many of the people who interact with him find themselves feeling as though something's ever-so-slightly not right about him. They'd be correct, of course - he came of age during a wildly different time than anything the vast majority of living people have something to truly compare with.
His wariness and unwillingness (and, often, inability) to share unnecessary details, traits which kept him alive during the Great Purge, are now perceived as unfriendliness or extreme introversion. A great deal of the impulses that were rational and understandable during his time โ answering the door with a gun tucked into his waistband, refusal to break even small laws through activities like jaywalking โ now resonate as paranoia, and they're reflective of a very real pathological lack of trust in the government. He gives police officers in particular a very wide berth because he understands their mentality to a degree that most civilians don't, and he knows from personal experience how deep corruption can run โ but this made him seem slightly 'off' and aloof in his near-daily social interactions with the police when he was an EMT during his time alive.
In general, Vasiliy does not trust quickly or easily. Reliability and sincerity have to be proven to him, but because of this, he has very few people to confide in. He wasn't raised to have the emotional skills to deal with intense distress alone, either, so he smokes and drinks in lieu of independently addressing his own feelings head-on. He's highly desensitized to violence and is very difficult to rattle, but during the few times when he does feel overwhelmed, his immediate reaction is to step outside to smoke.
Vasiliy is predisposed to value the group over the individual and is willing to make sacrifices beyond what is fair to expect of him; like most second-wave Bolsheviks, he is remarkably hard-working. He still has a few other idiosyncrasies connected to this that crop up routinely: he's humble to a self-deprecating, obviously dishonest degree and can't really take a compliment, and virtually all of his emails and lengthier messages start with an apology ("I'm sorry to bother you, but...", "I'm sorry to waste your time but I must ask...", etc.).
Vasiliy hasn't truly processed the shock, betrayal, and grief of being abruptly disposed of by the same political machine that made him feel valued because it's too much for him to take in โ while he's able to acknowledge that he was a part of a cruel and flawed system and is trying to (in his mind) repent for his role in the purge, accepting that he was just as disposable as all the members of the NKVD that came before him is too much of a disruption to his understanding of the world to be digestible. He's reached a point at which he's starting to see Stalin for what he truly was, but accepting that almost all of his reality was based on lies is extremely difficult, so it's been a very gradual process. He feels deep guilt and remorse over his role in the Great Purge, but he hasn't told anyone about this (with the exception of two close friends in Chicago) because A) he recognizes that his story sounds completely and entirely false B) telling them would involve reliving many things he tries to avoid thinking about (to include his own execution) and C) he knows it's a lot to take in if his audience does believe him.
Abilities/Powers/Weaknesses & Warping:
ABILITIES
โบ Vasiliy doesn't have any superhuman abilities, but he's uncannily, eerily good at persuading people to do things/getting others to let their guard down around him when he makes a deliberate effort to do so. He's got great unconscious control of his body language and is highly perceptive, both of which are very helpful. Despite this, he tries to avoid doing this because he sees it as a reminder of his past he'd rather leave behind.
โบ While his role in the NKVD didn't involve administering or ordering physical violence, he was still given some degree of training - so he's an excellent shot (average to below average in his larger cohort in the 30s, however) and knows how to quickly restrain and subdue people.
โบ He also has modern medical training as an EMT.
WEAKNESSES
โบ Vasiliy's major weakness didn't appear until he awoke in his 'next' life - while he doesn't display enough symptoms to be diagnosable as having post traumatic stress disorder, there are quite a few things that get to himโloud sounds, hearing people going up/down stairs if he can't see them (this is a big one), the smell of mildew, and small rooms/rooms without windows.
โบ To anyone who didn't live through the great terror or any of its foreign analogs, he's going to come off as very paranoid and generally rather weird.
โบ Vasiliy speaks English well enough to communicate basic thoughts, but his English is awkward and he struggles with articles and pronunciation to a glaringly obvious degree. He has a pretty good vocabulary and there are some phrases that frequently crop up at work that he's able to say almost perfectly. Despite all of this, he refuses to speak Russian around native speakers because he knows his Russian is very dated, identifyingly so โ the effective equivalent of a modern American speaking with a transatlantic accent and WWII-era colloquialisms.
Inventory:
- EMT uniform; black work shoes.
- Nagant m1895 revolver, the same model as his old service weapon. This one was obtained at a gun show - ironically, despite all of his attempts to distance himself from his past, he chose to carry a fairly antiquated weapon because he didn't want to leave his comfort zone. It is one of the few elements of his past he's held on to, one of the few links he found himself unable to sever.
- standard EMS duffel. There's a pretty decent breakdown of what these things have in them here. (Linked for brevity.)
- an iphone 5 in a comically protective case.
Writing Samples:
MOSCOW, RUSSIA โ 1937
"Comrade Sapozhnikov." Ignoring the deep ache rooted in the muscles of his shoulders, Vasiliy casts a sympathetic smile in the direction of the dead-faced man half-slumped over the interrogation table as he walks toward it, shutting the door gently behind himself (or as gently as one can shut a metal door). "I'm Comrade Ardankin."
The subject eyes the gun holstered at his waist; he responds to the shift of his gaze with a quiet, self-effacing laugh, undoing the snap keeping the holster closed with his thumb. "Apologies. I'm used to wearing it. I don't think I've actually used it since it was given to me, but it looks sharp." He draws the revolver slowly at about the same time he puts one leg up on the far corner of the table, comfortably resting about half his weight on its surface as he begins to dismantle the weapon on his thigh. He silently pushes the ejector rod upwards and sideways without looking over at the man who is undoubtedly looking at him, then pulls the base pin and releases the cylinder, sliding it and all seven of its bullets across the table, followed by the frame and its pieces. Sapozhnikov watches him as though he's insane.
"It's not a test. I just don't like it digging into my hip when I sit and I'd like for us to speak as equals for a few moments." They're not, of course. Sapozhnikov doesn't bring up that point. Vasiliy makes a point of sighing, then moves to a lower perch on the chair opposite his subject's, scooting forward to make eye contact. "Comrade, I'm here because there are things all of us must do for the greater good. I am here because our country needs me to be here. It is icy on the walk from my apartment, I believe I am contracting a chest cold, and I have not slept inโ" He glances down at his watch, an unremarkable thing with a bad scratch dividing the glass face. "โthirty-four hours. But I do this because my country has asked it of me, and there is honor in doing so. Generally speaking, from what I've read of your party background, it seems as though you've done the same."
The first spark of life glimmers in the man's eyes. "I have. This is what I've been saying, this is what I have been trying to tell anyone who will listen to me. My party record is impeccable, Comrade."
They're getting somewhere. His past's on the table now; granted, the pretyped confession remains folded neatly in the pocket of Vasiliy's jacket. He smiles at the man in a pitying sort of way. "It's very good. Not impeccable, but very good. Now. Your duty as a member of the Communist Party is to be honest in your shortcomings. How else can you improve? And that is why we are here."
It's not. They need more names.
"If you cooperate, Comrade, I can reward you for your honesty. Things will be much easier if you simply confess to the offenses that have been reported to us." That much is true; this first meeting is the easiest his stay will get. He's got a few hours to talk Sapozhnikov into signing before they make him sign. "They're lighter crimes than most of what we see here. Then you can work, you can better yourself. This does not have to be a violent experience, not at all. I, personally, would prefer it not to be."
He means that much in earnest.
MAINE โ 2019
[ there had been more dread and less pain the last time โ a deafening bang and black nothingness, the only pain a horrid ache in his heart and chafing from the handcuffs cinched too tight around his wrists. men who intended to kill were generally good at it.
perhaps, vasiliy thinks as he stomps out the spent end of one cigarette (not truly necessary, being that he'd flicked it into the snow) and immediately lights another, this was the death that he'd actually deserved - the split second of recognition, the slam of metal against his body and the thump of ice and poorly-salted asphalt against his broken bones, the high-beam headlights in his eyes,. he'd been alive for at least five minutes after the impact, at least from what he's been able to discern while sifting through the fragmented memories of the call prior to the moment he lost consciousness. that was the hell he'd earned; it was fair enough. a single gunshot to the back of the head, surgical and impersonal, had been too easy a way to go.
not an executioner this time, not someone who was practiced in ending lives: just a drunk driver or another inexperienced motorist in addition to the one the firefighters had been busy prying out of the prius crumpled against the I-90 guardrail โ either way, the traffic redirection efforts were a failure, and every tiny movement of his deeply contused muscles are an uncomfortable reminder of that.
that doesn't stop him from reflexively reaching into the carton in his breast pocket and holding one out with a badly bruised hand when he catches the nearest warm body fumbling for one of their own in his peripheral vision. ] Need a smoke?
OUT OF CHARACTER
Player Name: Lauren
Player Age: 23
Player Contact: grinchhands mcgee#7599 @ discord or
Other Characters In Game: None yet!
In-Game Tag If Accepted: Vasiliy Yegorovich Ardankin: Lauren
Permissions for Character: x
Are you comfortable with prominent elements of fourth-walling?: Yep!
What themes of horror/psychological thrillers do you enjoy the most?: I like things in which there's a lengthy buildup of suspense and reality is uncertain - IE., Rosemary's Baby, The Shining, Silence of the Lambs.
Is there anything in particular you absolutely need specific content warnings for?: Eye trauma and tornadoes/hurricanes.
Additional Information: N/A