Post by Ludmila Ilyukhin on Aug 16, 2010 13:50:47 GMT -7
A slightly reworked version. The history is still the same except for a few details, she only has two powers, and works for the BPRD.
NAME: Ludmila Rusalka Ilyukhin.
NICKNAME: Niva, Predatel, Paleface.
CLASSIFICATION: Rusalka.
GENDER: Female.
AGE & BIRTHDAY: 355 years old, born some time in March 1355 AD.
APPEARANCE:Ludmila looks like an usually pale and thin human woman, with short, very blonde hair almost bordering on silver and big watery grey eyes. She has a somewhat angular face, with high cheek bones and a pair of sensuous lips, all usually set in a cold, neutral expression, which can sometimes appear grim. Her hair is always gathered into a small bun, held together by a white comb.
This however is just a disguise she uses to hide her true form. When she removes her comb, her appearance undergoes a dramatic change, as her eyes become bigger and lose their pupils and irises, leaving just two ghostly pools of white. Her body will also become a lot more pale, and her skinny form will become almost emaciated and a terrifying spectral pale.
Ludmila seems to possess no physical mass, which gives her a very graceful walk, as well as making almost no sound whatsoever. She is not very tall, measuring about 1 m 64, and weighs practically nothing.
ATTIRE: Never ever seen without her comb, and often wears very practical clothes like a pair of jeans, leather boots and scuffed leather jacket. She also owns an old Soviet uniform, which she used to wear back in her “glory days” in the NKVD and KGB. She almost never wears it now. She sometimes wears a pair old old aviator sunglasses.
PLAY BY: N/A.
NAME: "Нева", or Niva after the river she originally came from.
POWER LIST:
-Supernatural affinity with water.
-Seduction.
DETAILED POWER: Being a Rusalka, and therefore a being born of water and spiritual energy, Ludmila has strong ties with that element. She can swim in freezing cold water due to her being from the river Niva, in Russia, and has great speed and agility in that element. It is also impossible for her to drown.
In Slavic mythology, the Rusalki are described as female semi-spectral beings who emerged from their mother river on certain nights to seduce men and lure them to a watery death. Ludmila does not always drown members of the male gender, but she does exert a strong influence on them, wether she be in human form or original form. This power does not really work with women, with a few exceptions.
ALIGNMENT/OCCUPATION: BPRD, new recruit (rookie doesn't really fit her curriculum).
WEAPONS: Prefers Russian weapons like the Stechkin APS machine-pistol, the AS VAL special assault rifle or the AK-74, and often uses a Stechkin as her side arm. She will also sometimes use a VSS Vintorez or a VAL due to their low recoil.
PERSONALITY: Rusalka being inferior creatures of the magical realm they do not really have the same range of emotions as higher creatures like elves or humans. They are the result of the sudden exteriorisation of a young maiden's pain, confusion and sometimes hatred blending with a river's spiritual whole, thereby creating a Rusalka. Ludmila was no exception, as she felt no emotions other than a certain hatred for men, sadness and a desire to drown male victims in the Niva. This lack of emotion was broken after she fell in love with a young vityaz and was subsequently betrayed by him.
This fact is an important influence in her personality. It made Ludmila feel closer to humans as she was able to experience the same feelings: greed, jealousy, vanity, hatred, arrogance...so many typically human traits that other "loftier" magical creatures do not experience or look down on. She will often experience certain emotions a lot more strongly than a human.
Despite this abundance of feeling, Ludmila is a rather cold person, preferring to put her emotions away so that they don't get in the way when she's on duty. This is also due to her betrayal by the young vityaz all those centuries ago, which left her heartbroken and burning with sadness and hatred. Even today she still feels bitter and sad about it. She is not keen on human relations, preferring to keep simple professional relations with her colleagues, and sometimes allowing a friendly relation with some select individuals. She also sees love as a weakness, for obvious reasons.
This icy facade clashes with the strong, even violent emotions she can feel as a result of her 'liberation' all those centuries ago, and sometimes her cold facade can collapse in a spectacular way, usually when something goes wrong and her frustration is pushed into anger, giving way to a very violent, passionate outburst during which nobody is safe.
She is closer to humanity than to her supernatural kin, and feels no sympathy for the creatures she kills during her missions as she was banished from their realm by her own volition. Humanity is the race who dragged her out of the simple-minded state of a vengeful by-product of a dead young woman's pain and sorrow. She harbours a healthy disdain for creatures like elves which sometimes borders on hatred, a feeling which is all part of a greater inferiority complex.
She is also very nostalgic about the Soviet Union and her days in the NKVD and the KGB, which she considers her "glory days". Her days working for the USSR were her first genuinely happy days in her life, as it was the first time she was ever treated as something more savoury than an evil spirit/demon. The people in the GPU, NKVD and KGB actually treated her as a human being, albeit a special one). She enjoys killing things, especially by drowning. It is a trait she kept from her Rusalka nature, and it will often lead her to killing all her opponents without feeling any remorse or sympathy. During the act of killing she will feel a rush of adrenaline and spiritual energy not dissimilar to that felt by some human soldiers or murderers, a rush she evidently enjoys.
Another very human trait of hers is the consumption and abuse of alcohol, a substance she enjoys drinking when off duty (especially wine). She also smokes a lot of tobacco, a habit that helps her curb and control her emotions as well as maintain her cold facade and demeanour.
SKILLS:
-Ludmila has good knowledge of the occult as well as in depth knowledge of Nazi and Soviet paranormal research, two things she was either a spectator of or was actively involved in.
-She also received excellent stealth and infiltration training during her years in the NKVD and KGB, which enables her to avoid detection by her enemies, a useful skill during assassination missions.
-Ludmila is fluent in English and French as well as the Elven language.
STRENGTHS:
Ludmila is a great sniper, spy and infiltrator, three things she was trained to do during her years, or rather decades, in the GPU, NKVD and KGB. When armed with a Vintorez, she can take out multiple moving targets with single shots before vanishing without a trace.
Underwater she is a formidable opponent, more so than on land, as it is her natural element and it lends her strength and speed.
WEAKNESSES:
Ludmila is not very strong, and will often have a lot of trouble lifting something heavier than an assault rifle. Moving or lifting up a table is nigh impossible for her. This lack of strength evidently puts her at a disadvantage in close combat on land.
Her comb is also a weak point. Should it be stolen or destroyed, Ludmila would be forced to stay in or close to water or else she would wither away and die.
Her aura of influence on men only works if her target is unaware of her nature, and it is also ineffective against psychics. Ludmila is extremely vulnerable to religious imagery, especially religious icons. Those will drain her of her strength and reveal her true nature, leaving her at the mercy of whoever is wearing said icon.
HISTORY: Born from the death of a heartbroken young maiden who drowned herself in the Niva in 1355, Ludmila spent her early years as a normal Rusalka: swimming in her mother river, dancing in the fields at night with other Rusalki and luring young men to watery deaths in the Niva. Everything changed for her in 1587 when a handsome young vityaz (Russian knight) stopped by the quiet river bank she and her friends frequented most. The vityaz spent the night there, and Ludmila's friends considered trying to seduce him, but Ludmila's interest in the young knight was such that she stopped her friends from doing so, causing a terrible argument.
The knight left the next morning, travelling upstream by following the Niva's banks. Little did he know that Ludmila was quietly following him from the river. As the journey progressed, Ludmila became quite infatuated with the vityaz and eventually fell desperately in love with him. She sought the help of a witch who lived near the Niva, setting out one night while the vityaz was asleep and going to the witch's small house under a hill. She begged the witch to help her, and the former finally accepted to help her by giving her an enchanted comb in exchange of her own comb. The comb the witch offered her had the power to hide her true nature, disguising her as a human, and would enable her to live in the world of Man by giving her the ability to live without bathing in water.
Ludmila hesitated at first, as giving away her comb would put her at risk of being banished from her world forever, but she accepted. The following night, wearing her new comb, she emerged from the Niva and approached the vityaz, soaking wet and naked and tried to pass herself off as a young woman who had barely escaped drowning. Sadly, the vityaz was wearing an icon representing the Christ Pantokrator around his neck, which made Ludmila collapse to the ground and revealed her true nature to him.
Horrified, and a fervent Orthodox Christian, the vityaz was about to kill her when he took pity of Ludmila, who was begging him to spare her life. He took her to a nearby chapel, where the priest sealed her under the altar. The vityaz left, and Ludmila was imprisoned in the chapel for 281 years until she was unearthed during restoration work on the chapel in 1868.
She was subsequently transferred to a secret "chamber of curiosities" under the Winter Palace as a part of Czar Alexander III's private collection of supernatural oddities. She remained imprisoned in a tank filled with water, seeing many important members of the Russian court, including Rasputin, until the Russian Revolution. After the Bolsheviks took power, the GPU made a thourough search of the Winter Palace, discovering the secret chamber in which Ludmila was kept.
At first, they considered destroying Ludmila as a dangerous supernatural creature, but decided to keep her in order to study her.
Despite being a guinea pig, Ludmila was well treated by the scientists the GPU handed her to, and one of them named her after his daughter who had died during the civil war, thus giving Ludmila her current name.
In 1929, the GPU, under the initiative of Vladimir Fedorovsky, created its paranormal and occult branch, and Ludmila was recruited. A couple of years later, she was given Soviet citizenship and a proper last name, the first time she had been given a proper identity, as before that she had only been known as "Rusalka". Now known as "Comrade Ludmila Ilyukhin", she worked for the GPU until its integration into the NKVD in 1934, Stalin's secret police.
Ludmila was taken into the NKVD's own paranormal and occult branch, and worked throughout the 1930s until World War 2 broke out. She was actively involved in the Soviet's own struggle against Nazi occult and paranormal research, and was aware of projects such as the Nazi Space Program and Ragnarok. In 1943, she took part in a mission that stopped the Nazis from summoning an army of dead German soldiers, saving Stalingrad and Moscow in the process.
In 1946, she was part of the Soviet delegation sent to Berlin to speak to the BPRD and Professor Trevor Bruttenholm about Hellboy and Nazi "doomsday projects".
Following the death of Stalin in 1953, and the replacement of the NKVD by the KGB in 1954, Ludmila was integrated into the KGB's occult and paranormal branch, heralding the beginning of the "golden years" of her career.
In 1967, she was put in charge of a large scale mission in a small town of Siberia to combat an outbreak of vampirism. Many of the agents died during the operation, and she was one of the only survivors. The mission was accomplished, and all the vampires were destroyed. She was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal for her performance during said mission, a medal she has kept to this day.
In the 1970s, she was involved in a case of paranormal espionage opposing the KGB and the BPRD. She was also involved in the infamous "psychic assasin" projects of the Soviet Union, various psy-weaponry projects and attempts to find mystical objects.
During the 1980s in Afghanistan she was in charge of a commando whose mission was to beat the CIA and BPRD to an ancient tomb of unknown content. When the Americans reached the tomb first and accidentally released its occupant, the ancient Mesopotamian demon Pasuzu, Ludmila attempted to seal the tomb again by dynamiting it. Unfortunately, Pasuzu escaped by possessin one the American agents. After returning from Afghanistan she was awarded the Order of Lenin for her services to the Soviet Union and its people.
In 1990, she was found guilty of trying to use occult means to preserve the Soviet Union from decline and jailed alongside several other members of the plot. In 1991, the USSR was dissolved along with the KGB, and Ludmila was released from prison in 1993. She was briefly recruited by the FSB’s paranormal division, but said division ran into funding problems in 1998, leading to it being partly dismantled. Incredibly, Ludmila was offered, in 2010, a chance to join the BPRD, an agency she had often worked against in the past. Having nowhere else to go, she accepted and was sent to the USA.
THE HANDLER
NAME: Ludmila Rusalka Ilyukhin.
NICKNAME: Niva, Predatel, Paleface.
CLASSIFICATION: Rusalka.
GENDER: Female.
AGE & BIRTHDAY: 355 years old, born some time in March 1355 AD.
APPEARANCE:Ludmila looks like an usually pale and thin human woman, with short, very blonde hair almost bordering on silver and big watery grey eyes. She has a somewhat angular face, with high cheek bones and a pair of sensuous lips, all usually set in a cold, neutral expression, which can sometimes appear grim. Her hair is always gathered into a small bun, held together by a white comb.
This however is just a disguise she uses to hide her true form. When she removes her comb, her appearance undergoes a dramatic change, as her eyes become bigger and lose their pupils and irises, leaving just two ghostly pools of white. Her body will also become a lot more pale, and her skinny form will become almost emaciated and a terrifying spectral pale.
Ludmila seems to possess no physical mass, which gives her a very graceful walk, as well as making almost no sound whatsoever. She is not very tall, measuring about 1 m 64, and weighs practically nothing.
ATTIRE: Never ever seen without her comb, and often wears very practical clothes like a pair of jeans, leather boots and scuffed leather jacket. She also owns an old Soviet uniform, which she used to wear back in her “glory days” in the NKVD and KGB. She almost never wears it now. She sometimes wears a pair old old aviator sunglasses.
PLAY BY: N/A.
THE CREATION
NAME: "Нева", or Niva after the river she originally came from.
POWER LIST:
-Supernatural affinity with water.
-Seduction.
DETAILED POWER: Being a Rusalka, and therefore a being born of water and spiritual energy, Ludmila has strong ties with that element. She can swim in freezing cold water due to her being from the river Niva, in Russia, and has great speed and agility in that element. It is also impossible for her to drown.
In Slavic mythology, the Rusalki are described as female semi-spectral beings who emerged from their mother river on certain nights to seduce men and lure them to a watery death. Ludmila does not always drown members of the male gender, but she does exert a strong influence on them, wether she be in human form or original form. This power does not really work with women, with a few exceptions.
THE POTENTIAL
ALIGNMENT/OCCUPATION: BPRD, new recruit (rookie doesn't really fit her curriculum).
WEAPONS: Prefers Russian weapons like the Stechkin APS machine-pistol, the AS VAL special assault rifle or the AK-74, and often uses a Stechkin as her side arm. She will also sometimes use a VSS Vintorez or a VAL due to their low recoil.
PERSONALITY: Rusalka being inferior creatures of the magical realm they do not really have the same range of emotions as higher creatures like elves or humans. They are the result of the sudden exteriorisation of a young maiden's pain, confusion and sometimes hatred blending with a river's spiritual whole, thereby creating a Rusalka. Ludmila was no exception, as she felt no emotions other than a certain hatred for men, sadness and a desire to drown male victims in the Niva. This lack of emotion was broken after she fell in love with a young vityaz and was subsequently betrayed by him.
This fact is an important influence in her personality. It made Ludmila feel closer to humans as she was able to experience the same feelings: greed, jealousy, vanity, hatred, arrogance...so many typically human traits that other "loftier" magical creatures do not experience or look down on. She will often experience certain emotions a lot more strongly than a human.
Despite this abundance of feeling, Ludmila is a rather cold person, preferring to put her emotions away so that they don't get in the way when she's on duty. This is also due to her betrayal by the young vityaz all those centuries ago, which left her heartbroken and burning with sadness and hatred. Even today she still feels bitter and sad about it. She is not keen on human relations, preferring to keep simple professional relations with her colleagues, and sometimes allowing a friendly relation with some select individuals. She also sees love as a weakness, for obvious reasons.
This icy facade clashes with the strong, even violent emotions she can feel as a result of her 'liberation' all those centuries ago, and sometimes her cold facade can collapse in a spectacular way, usually when something goes wrong and her frustration is pushed into anger, giving way to a very violent, passionate outburst during which nobody is safe.
She is closer to humanity than to her supernatural kin, and feels no sympathy for the creatures she kills during her missions as she was banished from their realm by her own volition. Humanity is the race who dragged her out of the simple-minded state of a vengeful by-product of a dead young woman's pain and sorrow. She harbours a healthy disdain for creatures like elves which sometimes borders on hatred, a feeling which is all part of a greater inferiority complex.
She is also very nostalgic about the Soviet Union and her days in the NKVD and the KGB, which she considers her "glory days". Her days working for the USSR were her first genuinely happy days in her life, as it was the first time she was ever treated as something more savoury than an evil spirit/demon. The people in the GPU, NKVD and KGB actually treated her as a human being, albeit a special one). She enjoys killing things, especially by drowning. It is a trait she kept from her Rusalka nature, and it will often lead her to killing all her opponents without feeling any remorse or sympathy. During the act of killing she will feel a rush of adrenaline and spiritual energy not dissimilar to that felt by some human soldiers or murderers, a rush she evidently enjoys.
Another very human trait of hers is the consumption and abuse of alcohol, a substance she enjoys drinking when off duty (especially wine). She also smokes a lot of tobacco, a habit that helps her curb and control her emotions as well as maintain her cold facade and demeanour.
SKILLS:
-Ludmila has good knowledge of the occult as well as in depth knowledge of Nazi and Soviet paranormal research, two things she was either a spectator of or was actively involved in.
-She also received excellent stealth and infiltration training during her years in the NKVD and KGB, which enables her to avoid detection by her enemies, a useful skill during assassination missions.
-Ludmila is fluent in English and French as well as the Elven language.
STRENGTHS:
Ludmila is a great sniper, spy and infiltrator, three things she was trained to do during her years, or rather decades, in the GPU, NKVD and KGB. When armed with a Vintorez, she can take out multiple moving targets with single shots before vanishing without a trace.
Underwater she is a formidable opponent, more so than on land, as it is her natural element and it lends her strength and speed.
WEAKNESSES:
Ludmila is not very strong, and will often have a lot of trouble lifting something heavier than an assault rifle. Moving or lifting up a table is nigh impossible for her. This lack of strength evidently puts her at a disadvantage in close combat on land.
Her comb is also a weak point. Should it be stolen or destroyed, Ludmila would be forced to stay in or close to water or else she would wither away and die.
Her aura of influence on men only works if her target is unaware of her nature, and it is also ineffective against psychics. Ludmila is extremely vulnerable to religious imagery, especially religious icons. Those will drain her of her strength and reveal her true nature, leaving her at the mercy of whoever is wearing said icon.
THE STORY
HISTORY: Born from the death of a heartbroken young maiden who drowned herself in the Niva in 1355, Ludmila spent her early years as a normal Rusalka: swimming in her mother river, dancing in the fields at night with other Rusalki and luring young men to watery deaths in the Niva. Everything changed for her in 1587 when a handsome young vityaz (Russian knight) stopped by the quiet river bank she and her friends frequented most. The vityaz spent the night there, and Ludmila's friends considered trying to seduce him, but Ludmila's interest in the young knight was such that she stopped her friends from doing so, causing a terrible argument.
The knight left the next morning, travelling upstream by following the Niva's banks. Little did he know that Ludmila was quietly following him from the river. As the journey progressed, Ludmila became quite infatuated with the vityaz and eventually fell desperately in love with him. She sought the help of a witch who lived near the Niva, setting out one night while the vityaz was asleep and going to the witch's small house under a hill. She begged the witch to help her, and the former finally accepted to help her by giving her an enchanted comb in exchange of her own comb. The comb the witch offered her had the power to hide her true nature, disguising her as a human, and would enable her to live in the world of Man by giving her the ability to live without bathing in water.
Ludmila hesitated at first, as giving away her comb would put her at risk of being banished from her world forever, but she accepted. The following night, wearing her new comb, she emerged from the Niva and approached the vityaz, soaking wet and naked and tried to pass herself off as a young woman who had barely escaped drowning. Sadly, the vityaz was wearing an icon representing the Christ Pantokrator around his neck, which made Ludmila collapse to the ground and revealed her true nature to him.
Horrified, and a fervent Orthodox Christian, the vityaz was about to kill her when he took pity of Ludmila, who was begging him to spare her life. He took her to a nearby chapel, where the priest sealed her under the altar. The vityaz left, and Ludmila was imprisoned in the chapel for 281 years until she was unearthed during restoration work on the chapel in 1868.
She was subsequently transferred to a secret "chamber of curiosities" under the Winter Palace as a part of Czar Alexander III's private collection of supernatural oddities. She remained imprisoned in a tank filled with water, seeing many important members of the Russian court, including Rasputin, until the Russian Revolution. After the Bolsheviks took power, the GPU made a thourough search of the Winter Palace, discovering the secret chamber in which Ludmila was kept.
At first, they considered destroying Ludmila as a dangerous supernatural creature, but decided to keep her in order to study her.
Despite being a guinea pig, Ludmila was well treated by the scientists the GPU handed her to, and one of them named her after his daughter who had died during the civil war, thus giving Ludmila her current name.
In 1929, the GPU, under the initiative of Vladimir Fedorovsky, created its paranormal and occult branch, and Ludmila was recruited. A couple of years later, she was given Soviet citizenship and a proper last name, the first time she had been given a proper identity, as before that she had only been known as "Rusalka". Now known as "Comrade Ludmila Ilyukhin", she worked for the GPU until its integration into the NKVD in 1934, Stalin's secret police.
Ludmila was taken into the NKVD's own paranormal and occult branch, and worked throughout the 1930s until World War 2 broke out. She was actively involved in the Soviet's own struggle against Nazi occult and paranormal research, and was aware of projects such as the Nazi Space Program and Ragnarok. In 1943, she took part in a mission that stopped the Nazis from summoning an army of dead German soldiers, saving Stalingrad and Moscow in the process.
In 1946, she was part of the Soviet delegation sent to Berlin to speak to the BPRD and Professor Trevor Bruttenholm about Hellboy and Nazi "doomsday projects".
Following the death of Stalin in 1953, and the replacement of the NKVD by the KGB in 1954, Ludmila was integrated into the KGB's occult and paranormal branch, heralding the beginning of the "golden years" of her career.
In 1967, she was put in charge of a large scale mission in a small town of Siberia to combat an outbreak of vampirism. Many of the agents died during the operation, and she was one of the only survivors. The mission was accomplished, and all the vampires were destroyed. She was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal for her performance during said mission, a medal she has kept to this day.
In the 1970s, she was involved in a case of paranormal espionage opposing the KGB and the BPRD. She was also involved in the infamous "psychic assasin" projects of the Soviet Union, various psy-weaponry projects and attempts to find mystical objects.
During the 1980s in Afghanistan she was in charge of a commando whose mission was to beat the CIA and BPRD to an ancient tomb of unknown content. When the Americans reached the tomb first and accidentally released its occupant, the ancient Mesopotamian demon Pasuzu, Ludmila attempted to seal the tomb again by dynamiting it. Unfortunately, Pasuzu escaped by possessin one the American agents. After returning from Afghanistan she was awarded the Order of Lenin for her services to the Soviet Union and its people.
In 1990, she was found guilty of trying to use occult means to preserve the Soviet Union from decline and jailed alongside several other members of the plot. In 1991, the USSR was dissolved along with the KGB, and Ludmila was released from prison in 1993. She was briefly recruited by the FSB’s paranormal division, but said division ran into funding problems in 1998, leading to it being partly dismantled. Incredibly, Ludmila was offered, in 2010, a chance to join the BPRD, an agency she had often worked against in the past. Having nowhere else to go, she accepted and was sent to the USA.
