Information for Mikhail Novikov (X)

Information for Mikhail Novikov!


Mentor Lavrenti Dudaev - Akashic Brother, Sora-da (Tamer of Void) - Lavrenti was a doctor...of sorts. He worked in clinics after returning home from medical school, unable to complete his degree. The coming Chechen wars did not call him back so much as a terrible feeling that a painful end was coming. It was a rare thing for him to feel such a prophetic vision, but when he was overwhelmed with visions, a friend recording all he said and saw, he knew he had to leave Moscow and rush home. Something was in the mountain, Mount Elbrus. Something eternal. It is there he found a newly awakened mage (Mikhail) and sought the set him right on the path. But he never speaks of why he did this, what he saw.

Traveling Onward
When the curtain fell, Mikhail needed to heal and learn of his path. He introduces him to many magi, visits chantries, mainly filled with Euthanatos and Cult of X. Eventually he takes them through Georgia to the haunted site of ruins of Armazi. This city held the pass in the greater Caucasas Mountains. It is believed the vampires, magi, and Shadow Lords fought constantly for these passages, which led to the Near East. But the moment the hag moved in, the city was decimated. No one and nothing has been allowed to excavate the site, always protected by warriors and finally politics. It remains quite a mystery.

Leaving Armazi, they traveled to Baku, Azerbaijan. Again, Lavrenti said little while visiting numerous tombs and speaking to elderly members of the city. But one name did come up... Sergei Kirov. A small chantry gives them further aid and recovery. But Lavrenti is on a mission.

The Week of Nightmares
A horrific vision wrecked Lavrenti. The Chechen lost his vision from the headaches for a few days, babbling in Russian of what he saw. Never had Mikhail seen the man so unhinged. At near breakneck speeds, he worked to gain them entry into India, a place most magi tend to run away from, not into. Something gripped the land, especially a rising tide of warfare between the Quincunx of China and the Heretical Dharmas of India.

The Technocracy nearly drove Lavrenti and many others into hysteria and death as they rained spirit nukes on the sites as an ancient rises. A few important things happened at this time. A strange Indian man with brilliant gold eyes held back the pair from going too far into a landscape torn apart and hunted through by rather nasty spirits. He wore traditional attire and a turban though it held a jewel in a gold setting unlike anything they had ever seen, as if an eclipse was held within it. They could tell he was magical but not a mage.

A group of powerful spirits of primordial essence and resonance appeared and began wrecking havoc on those spirits and ghosts consuming the countryside.

Vampires went insane, often trying to tear them apart.

The week felt like a year when they finally made it through.

(still in the works!)

Knights of Radamanthys - NYC connection
Marcia Grimes - online personality Grimes Reaper
Grimes Reaper has a podcast called One Noose Away, a supportive discussion regarding life and death, focused for those considering suicide be it due to depression, medical, a fad, etc. Grimes uses this guise as a way to help direct information and contacts for the Knights in New England. The further this podcast reaches, the higher in the ranks she moves to take over messages and movements in America and beyond.

Alois Brunner, alias Avernus
Leading Knights in New York
The Wiesenthal Center is skeptical as to whether the "best man" to Adolf Eichmann is still alive; the last reported sighting of him was in 2001. Brunner has been found responsible for the deportation of more than 128,000 Jews from France, Austria, Greece, and Slovakia to death camps. He was last living in Syria -- where the regime sheltered him for decades and where he worked as a "government adviser" -- which has stymied French efforts to make Brunner serve a life sentence for war crimes (he was convicted in absentia in 2001). The Austrian government has offered 50,000 Euros for his capture. Brunner told the Chicago Sun-Times by phone in 1987, "The Jews deserved to die. I have no regrets. If I had the chance I would do it again."

He is wizened but still strong in purpose and ability. A master of forces, life, and entropy, he believes in taking out large numbers to hide his kills, diversions of political extremists to cover murder he believes rational acts removing people that deserve nothing less than a destructive end. He often appears for brief moments to give scathing interviews, actively taking credit for numerous killings. No one has been able to find him.

After awakening during World War 2, he was hunted and sought by mages and sleepers alike. He had a choice between a courtship offered by the Euthanatos and Technocracy, accepting a place among the magi. He is a good reason for the fear, disgust, and hatred many traditions have for the Euthanatos.

His recent travels have taken him to New York. Here he works within the knights to find and destroy enemies, seeking out the vampires that murdered the Archbishop for a rather handsome price.

(This may not be exact to what we discussed. Willing to edit as we go. Sorry this took so long.)

Dark powers are certainly moving through the port and city of NYC. The Knights have kept a careful eye on some of the greater games being played among the leeches and magi. A serious incursion is occurring between three factions of the vampires. The control of the city continues to shift and change. The Camarilla hold the city currently, but the darker Sabbat are forcing their way within. War is heating up, battles spilling into the streets in front of mortals and sleepers.

The Knights had a few members keeping an eye on the battles, namely to be ready when hired for work. That would only be a matter of time. The Archbishop of the Celestial Chorus reached out to hire the Knights through Brunner. Despite being a man of faith and the cloth, the Archbishop shared many views with Brunner. The two have met numerous times on occasion to handle issues in the city. One such meeting was on the books with an unknown third party, to be quickly removed and hidden. Who or what that third was is a mystery. (something Mikhail could try looking into if interested)

Soon a new contract was written, Knights sought out, including Mikhail, to battle an influx of vampires in a specific section of the city. It was worse than a mere bloodbath. Horrific vampires that drove mortals mad just from looking upon them began running out from the subway entrance they were sent to invade and investigate. The deeper they went, the worse the bloodshed and oddness continued. Many members were wrenched down into hallways, found only as empty husks of what was once men. Arms and legs twisted. Blood gone to a drop. Nothing on walls to mark their passing.

Mikhail was cornered a few times, using skill and experience, not relying solely on magic. Hazy in his memory is the feeling of a hand on his arm, like stone, and a whispered hush. He woke with a few others in a cistern many blocks away.

When they returned, the Archbishop was found dead. That death a major mystery in itself. A few stories roamed that he fought vampires and sacrificed himself to destroy them in a massive wave of godly sunlight. Others whisper he had made entreaty to dark powers that tore him apart, changing him into something worse than bloodsuckers. Only a priest named Rainier might know, and he isn't chatty.

Brunner is furious by the loss, and wants his death investigated and handled. But it's too hot right now. Mikhail is sent with survivors to get free and safe. His remaining orders: learn what he can from the survivors to piece together the real picture of everything happening in the city.

Lavrenti arrived in NYC recently, aiding with the pushing of his charge and friend to get safe. But what the old Akashic can do to help is beyond Mikhail's understanding. Whenever this man arrives somewhere, deadly trouble is not far behind or ahead. The problem is learning if he is far too early, or far too late. In the case of the city, many think him far too late to help. But something just itches at his ear.

Ear itches, they mean so many things.

He stayed behind in the city, keeping watch on things till Rainier returns. He knows no one among these mages. But he has a superstitious legend that has crossed oceans and borders.

Mikhail dream (3-4 game): He stood upon the pier of New York, the bay so dark with blood it seemed midnight hued. Soft cries could be heard, immediately following the boom of explosions. Fires and smoke littered buildings and streets. Lavrenti ran forward to him, gripping his arms tightly around, something odd about how he stumbled with his head jiggling about on his neck. He fell then at his feet, most of his back slashed open, fed upon, showing his bony spine. "For once...I was...on time..."

The visions of Veles - Arete 3 Seeking

The great wolf moves in the passages of Mikhail's memories as a stalking, brooding thing. As he watches the fly of arrow, the driving home of it into the body of the deer with Yiska at his side, everything slows in that moment. A blink of time, nothing more, but he cannot shake that something was missed.

In sitting at watch, exhaustion pulled at him yet for no reason he could speak of. Firelight kindled at his back, saving his eyes for the deeper dark, for here in the lands beyond cities and mansions, wilderness ruled. Small sounds wandered the night of owls hunting, mice scurrying for bits of food. A scavenger or two may yet find the remains of the deer, soft mysterious growls and the sound of something ripping an echo through the trees. In those moments, even insects stopped their chittering rub of legs.

Yet something edged him as elusive, if not lost, a sensation that had once confused him before as those few first days after meeting Lavrenti. The elderly mage had found him covered in blood and ichorous gore, left behind as some foul tossing of body feasted upon by vampire fang and a mark he never thought to see with his naked eye. Wolf claw. Wolf fang. Delirious he had been, time lost and memories a haze of screams and shades, yet all his. The old man had tended wounds, physical and mental, ever present to walk through the most painful of realizations to leave most warriors impotent and broken, not so for this man, one who had awakened to the new vistas of an ascendant. The mind and spirit laid in a turmoil ages old, some of which...remained shrouded in a familiar mist. What Lavrenti found he never spoke of, and when he attempted, the week of nightmares had struck.

As he pondered the sudden thought of his father, of learning by his side, a slight shock ran through him. Not of his brother? Had they not traveled and hunted together far more than his father? The thought of Pytor drew him further to delve into the moment, the flying of that arrow, the slight wobble of carbon length moving with force through air that keened with it. The head sought the body, so much life and blood.

...blood laid on snow...on hands...so much for such a small wound. They had hunted well that eve, trudging through snow drifts and motioning with hands more than sound to stalk and corner their prey. Never had they counted so many points on a buck! Surely they should leave the stag be, but Pytor would have nothing of it; the kill would be theirs! Something burned in him, breathing of life and need, a vicious hunger taking hold. But it was not the buck that laid on the ground before him. Mikhail peered down at his own arm, the twitch of fingers, spittle and blood gleaming on dirty digits. He felt so tired then, so exhausted, trying to call to his brother. But his twin did not raise a bow and arrow, which now fell from nerveless fingers.

The eyes of that deer, the heaving of sides. Standing above it, he watched it breath its last. As he watched himself...A wolf had him down, tearing into the leather of his coat, trying to gnaw for throat and stomach as strong claws dug. So painfully hungry, the predator had found easier prey as it stalked the old stag. Pytor, he tried to call, voice a slurring of screams and whimpers. The end...the end had come... Shouts were in the distance, a strange baying that only made the youth laugh. The wolf had friends, well, they would eat well this night!

Pytor took one shambling step, then another, until running to the wolf on his brother. Black fur rose over flesh, clothing ripped, fangs and bone collided as the wolves fought. Darkness fell, broken by soft noises, the arrival of another. Hands laid on his cheeks, lips on his, life, blessed life returned. Forget it said, tucking away what he spied through some strange supernatural touch.

All at once, Mikhail came awake. No longer so tired.

What did it mean?!

The cycle of all things is a becoming. Stars and lights and souls are born and then die, cyclic and rhythmic, but they are shaped by the points between. Time can so easily slip through the fingers when one cannot wrest free its control.

How had Mikhail been so shaped?

It was not wholly in jest that he mentioned the doe's heart that eve. Warmed to living temperature, still thrumming with potential energy, it split with ease along ventricle and vessel. Slivers of fresh, bloody muscle were ingested in raw ceremony beyond others' eyes.

Garbled sound and flickering, nonsensical visions edged his sleep, memories and their echoes played in chiaroscuro shadow. Steeped in the psychic resonance of bygone times, they bid Mikhail follow alongside the ageless presence as much a part of him as his own mind.

The dreams of the Awakened are never so simple as Sleep.

Somnambulance did not shake him. In the cold and quiet dark, he reached out along the thread of primal essence illuminated by the Wolf's honed sight. It was subtle enough to be unnoticed, a burden and binding lost to familiarity, as one becomes accustomed to old aches and injuries. Here and now, it seemed alien and endemic both, a pang of loss and an adrenal innervation.

Mikhail was never one for tentative approaches. Confidence, composure, cunning and control combined with care to carry him forward. In his mind's eye he held fast to the tether, to the tangled thread, to the dream itself. Fate and the consciousness walked this road hand in hand. He stared long into the distance, tracing the swarming whispers and yawning silence down to their base note, to their nascence.

What choice had been made for him - by what or by whom? What might echo the tympanic beat of blood lost, occluded by mist and fury?

Dreams or memories, whatever they were, they had leaped upon Mikhail and caught his mind tightly. For a moment. But a moment is all that's needed. As he pressed back to follow the line of what he experienced, Veles moved within the shadows. The barest of sound, edge of a darker shape among the shadows, and eyes baleful bright.

Every ending is a beginning. Every beginning marks an end.

Another voice said those very same things as he sat naked before an equally prone Chantilly, asking about his dreams and a reading. She laid a card before him, a figure wrapped in shadowy clothing and a hat, pointing ahead while riding a horse, caught in a cage with a door opened. "Every ending has begun. This beginning is marking many ends." The knight of questing, she said. An odd sort of deck.

The mighty wolf moved nearer, forcing the trees to bend in the Euthantos' vision, ready to speak and share. He had always been with Mikhail. Of all feelings, that was prominent. And yet, was he? When did the great wolf first mark him? What did the vision of his brother mean? Did he dare quest?

He dares as he has always dared, doom-driven. That Chechen night opened the door to death but did not slay in him the sense of purpose. To move forward is to look backward, for in distance lies perspective, perspective he sought even now.

Through the dying calm inside him snaked a frisson of thrill.

Moonlight was a hard shell, sharp, ready to be struck and to ring like honed steel. Veles' burning shadow moved, a tremendous distortion. It poured like oil from between tall pines, flowing across dark earth, mounding up in Mikhail's perception amid a ripple of muscle and fur under-lit with restrained volcanic fury. He had always welcomed the presence, its wisdom, its kinship. Now was no different.

As the trees seemed to bend toward it, spellbound, the Euthanatos pushed forward, senses open, hungry, alive, questioning, determined to see.

He could not be sure if he dreamed or not, but no matter, it would affect him all the same. Death laid in visions as readily as a blade shoved into a gut or gunfire into the cranium. Yet the further he pressed, seeking that darkened corner of his thoughts, he felt true pain. Trees tightened, reaching to slice into his clothing or bar him further. The voices of his parents. The reminders of a dead brother. Yet, was he? A deep part refused to ever believe he was dead, as if their bond would tell him otherwise. He had found the place were wolves attacked but found nothing....as if...it never had been. Just a dream. And he accepted.

Not this time.

Soft flakes of snow fell between the tree limbs, drifting before his face, the bitter chill cutting through as the old winters of his homeland. Thin patches of snow soon grew deeper, the shadow of Veles ever closer but not answering unless spoken to directly. He was there, but only Mikhail could walk this path.

The air held an electricity that caught breath, charged and ready to strike, filling the body with such potential. Only the soft sounds of an echoing howl in the far distance.

It is twenty years ago in the bitter cold, in the stands of pines as old as instinct, as old as fear. Where moonlight through drifting snow should have fallen on spatters of blood, no lurid trace remained. The surface was pristine, no signs of a struggle.

No footprints, no trace, no sound but distant and indistinct echoes. Even the pain of cutting cold is too perfect, like fragmented crystal piercing the skin.

Veles' breath is brontide, breakers and chaos, eroding and entropic. Mikhail feels his presence, primal and powerful, and in kind projects gratitude. It is a warrior's reassurance, warm and vital as the memory of fraternal bond.

In the dream vision, in the mental scape, the Russian surges forward in pursuit of the distant howl, long strides bearing him hence.

The hunt begins, innervation coruscating in electric current, a thrill that heats his blood and burns in his lungs to spite the frost.

New York
As with all things, Lavrenti did not recognize the call until ...too late. Something old had begun rattling loose, something he felt deep in his bones when he found his friend Mikhail in the mess of supernaturals at war. He waited by the dock, on a pier, looking out with bushy brows furrowing. The submarine would give a sign and pop up when ready to accept more people needing evacuation. He believed he was in the right place, at the right time. But his mind and vision blurred at the edges to his left, a ghostly haze of memory for something that had not happened yet but would.

Mikhail stalked to him, blood and spittle on his cheeks, falling to his knees before the man. Snow fell around them both. Dark blood splattered from so many wounds on his back, wolf claw marks and gnawing bites. "For once...you are...on time..." He blinked, and nothing was there. A clear late spring evening, the loud music and clatter of traffic, and splash of water against the docks.

Near Briarthorn
Mikhail felt the bite of cold and snow against flesh, yet knew this had to be memory, felt positive it was. Veles moved in matching tandem as the Russian stepped forward into a place he had hunted so many times before. The trees he grew up within, the rivers frozen over, and yet...something of it was different now.

A ghosting of white, large and sleek, shifted through the trees north and to the east. When he stopped, it stopped. When he moved, it moved. Nothing beyond a sense of brighter white could be discerned when he looked upon it with the expectation of normal sight. The howl gave movement to his feet, as did it to the brighter white, as they twisted and turned through the woods. Trees swept past, footfalls lost in soft powder of snow untrodden. Veles gave a dark howl his own, a demand to know what was, what would be. A softer huff came from the northeast, perhaps from that bright movement.

The hulking form of Veles leaped and halted Mikhail in his tracks, growling and looking around with care. These trees were utterly unknown to him, a keen whistling and moan coming from them as if possessed by evil spirits or ghosts. Snow and ice glimmered from every limb, ever green, as if summer lush leaves were captured in a sudden freeze.

Inertia abates before the trees frozen, blooming lushness glossed with a glaze of glittering ice so like the frost on Russian evergreens, the rime of salt on the Arctic shore. The stop is sudden, preternaturally precise. Forward motion arrested by wrested will frustrates the hunt but prickles senses alive. Questing and famished flits Mikhail's attention, fixed upon the shadows and flame of his avatar companion, wolf creature, deity, kin. He needs this wisdom, now more than ever, a focus for this primal and urgent spark.

"What is it?"

Something must have bid the great beast pause, more than the familiar unfamiliarity of this place straddling reality and mindscape. There is no mistaking the magic here. Mikhail knows no fear amid the undercurrent of awe; he inflects his question with force beyond words, the gnawing and desperately hungry desire to unearth this hidden thing... consequences be damned, for once.

"What is it that you see?"

Before he knows it, Mikhail allows the urge to rule. He places his hands alongside his mouth, cupping them, projecting his own howl into the aether. Long, low and mournful it echoes in a peal, as wolf from the skin of man.

He had played these games with his brother, the distant reckoning stirs. Games of animal calls, of crying out into the night, a chorus of voices beyond the shadows of forest and glacier.

Pale eyes return to Veles's shape, brows aloft.

Veles snarls, hackles rising at the bright white figure beyond the trees. Not a figure of snow. What burns to the core of the wolf god is something he cannot deny. The half of the great moon, the face all see where he is the shadow. Something perhaps not expected.

As Mikhail howls, a deep resonating echo, so too does Veles. But his howl cries one word.

"SISTER!"

And the forest rings true with a twin howl in reply.

The white moves with a sudden spurring, splitting in two shapes, one dark and tall, one bright white. They rush through the woods, no longer hiding their trails. Veles leapt at the white shape, taking flight to chase. The other shape ran forward, turning as if to look back at Mikhail, no features to be seen, then running in a different direction.

Sister?

Before information may be gleaned, Veles bounds off in hot pursuit, a comet tail of roiling shadow and flame chasing celestial light.  

Mikhail's breath fogs white on the air as he bares his teeth, exhaling agitation and exhilaration. Instinct prickles; there is no time to weigh and measure, much as the hunter's adrenaline demands.  

Separation from Veles against two unknowns--especially when fragments of war-god kin are afoot--seems unwise.  Pack trumps pursuit. Powerful legs begin to bear him hence, not after the featureless figure but after the fleet shade and obfuscating illumination.

Questions rise just like the hairs at his nape.

Veles moved through the trees and snow, leaving a flaming trail for his chosen to follow. The crunch and grind of ice in claws and under his feet echoing through the night. What shadowy form was left behind did not follow, at least not in a way Mikhail could sense or see.

The harder they traveled, seeking through the drifts, the more the white form tried to get away. Veles twisted and stopped, sniffing then lowering his head, growling across an expanse. Sides heaving, a mirror reflection of Veles waited, pure white, eyes piercing blue, thickly furred and waiting. This wolf did not growl and lower as if to battle.

"Brother." She replied.

Mikhail watches the exchange between the two massive figures, his stance settling into a military at-ease. He shows no fear, though he does offer the newcomer the respect she deserves.

Sister of a god is a goddess in her own right. If not an aspect of Perun, then perhaps one of the entity's siblings - perhaps something beyond the soldier's ken.

Illuminated by the fiery spirit's animated light, the Russian listens, question written plainly upon the angles of his features. They may as well be spoken with the force of his intent, the burning need to know.

What is this? What does it mean?

The pale beast's voice echoes with distant familiarity in the halls of his mind, resounding with the sense of being watched.

The longer the pair stood before Mikhail, the more the white wolf would waver. If standing still, he saw a white wolf, smaller by far, but there. When moving, he spied a lovely woman, so pale, so inviting, a blurring shimmer of curves and interest.

Eveshka, Veles whispered to Mikhail. She is rusalka. Do not fall to her whims. But she is here for a reason. The name was not unknown to him, spirits of women that died too soon, before their anointed time. Too soon. Like his brother.

Again a part of his mind trembled as if a knot unraveled, a binding frayed.

"I see you have one of your own too." Those bright blue eyes shone, a lilting of meaning hidden in soft moans to Mikhail. Something in those whispers drew him, perhaps, but he was his own man.

"As do you. What follows you in this place?"

"Another, but not like this one."

And indeed, something was in the woods, watching, or trying to. A hazy shape beyond the circle.

His own man.

It has always been that way, or so it seems, whim and will against the workings of the sleeping world. He was not the best of soldiers, though he could often fool his superiors to that effect. He survived where a proper subordinate should have sacrificed himself without hesitation. He questioned orders, made his own decisions.

Such as he does now. He does not precisely approach the gleaming white creature, the lady within the wolf. Instead he begins to circle around the clearing, taking in the doubled visions of Veles and Eveshka in peripheral. Keen eyes settle their focus on the shadowy shape at the edge of the clearing.

The tiny hairs at Mikhail's nape stand on end. And what reason is this, tovarishch? The implications are not at all lost, this much he projects.

The darker figure moved once as a man may, holding to the boles of trees, keeping steps in the snow careful. The drifts could be deep, the way lost. A badly placed foothold could lead to falling or being too slow. Indistinct, it shifted like an apparition when drunken heavily on vodka. Not so much a shadow, here and there, Mikhail could spy out the curve of a nose, the sharp edges of hulking shoulders.

As Mikhail may near, so does it close. A mirror in so many ways, but making slight adjustments showing a far more intelligent mind behind it.

This was a dream right? But the cold bit at his breath. And the face of the shadow became far more clear.

Sharpened nose, profile strong and sure. A beard flowed long and curling over a chest wider than his own. The man was a creature of strength, so many words used by women he tumbled returning oddly in the moment. Each of them so like the shadow. The right height. The right look.

"Аво́сь да как-нибу́дь до добра́ не доведу́т." A familiar voice spoke, throaty and growled. Draw not your bow till your arrow is fixed.

The image facing Mikhail could easily be a fragment, a figment, an echo of the last vestiges of hope long since buried in winter's snows. Many things may be lost in the drift, but many things likewise survive the onslaught of freeze and thaw. The image before him could be a mirage, one of limitless possibilities reflected in a shattered mirror.

Had he his way, he might have grown old in the tameless forests and glacial wilds, subsisting on wit and will until the last fires were naught but embers. That was not to be, no - by the whim of a force then unrealized. He has spent his time since wresting control and there is still much to know.

Entropy is as fickle as it is beautiful in its merciless gyre. Curiosity and intrigue for the moment subsume all else. For now, his focus is on this.

There is an intelligence in the shadows, a thrum of energy, subtle but different from his own primal pattern. Pale eyes narrow at the intonation, at the sentiment, the dialect, the familiar face appearing as if through a frosted window pane.

Breath fogs white on the cold as he retorts, unable to resist the tug of a grin. "Борода не делает философом." You may have a beard, but that does not make you a philosopher, he taunts, goading as young men oft do.