Lev Kirilov (W.I.P.)

If your character's biography was moved here, chances are it needed some additional work. Place your own works in progress here for easier storage. Label them clearly with the W.I.P. acronym.
Post Reply
User avatar
IamLEAM1983
Site Admin
 

Posts: 3707
Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
Location: Quebec, Canada

Lev Kirilov (W.I.P.)

Post by IamLEAM1983 »

Name: Lev Kirilov
Age:
Gender: male
Species: anthro brown bear, superhuman

Strengths: thanks to Rasputin's efforts, this formerly humble farmhand loosely related to the Rurik dynasty became an erudite and courtly superhuman, capable of grounding all heat sources. Following basic thermodynamics, his ability to pull at ambient sources of heat results not in increased temperatures, but rather in stark and variably controlled decreases in temperature and barometric pressure. As far as basic observation allows anyone to understand, he can create and control land-based cyclonic or blizzard-like weather patterns as well as create various constructs out of his custom-made superdense ice. His years as a thematic villain saw him regularly blanket Hope – if not all of Rhode Island – in anomalous ice or snow storms he could use to put the city in gridlock or ground all potential flying superheroes. He can also apply fine levels of control to his powers, fashioning ice-based tools and weapons for himself, as well as armor or gear for his allies. Thankfully, Kirilov can pick and choose which heat sources to siphon energy from, sparing friends and allies from hypothermia. Following his change of heart, he's been known to encase vulnerable friends in ice – but with a barrier of temperate air insulating them from the bitter cold of their temporary shell.

Physically speaking, Lev is about as strong as you'd expect a well-maintained anthro bear to be, which is still slightly more than a human of similar constitution. His body's contained water being partially frozen, all liquids he produces tend to be more viscous than you'd expect. This makes Lev more resistant to bullet wounds or slashes, in that he won't bleed much when injured. His unnaturally cold metabolism is also poorly suited for most germs, viruses and microbes, with only those needed for homeostasis to be maintained having been allowed to adapt to his lowered core temperature. He carries the sort of intestinal flora you'd expect out of anyone else's digestive system, but is otherwise almost completely sterile by nature. There isn't much he can contaminate even when fomites are considered, and not much of anything can actually contaminate him.

Otherwise, Lev is a Russian of the old guard, much along the same lines as Anastasius Romanov. As he predates the Cold War ideologically, he doesn't quite fit the stereotype of the “Russian Bear” most American media stuck him with during the Golden Era of Superheroes. Far from being a heavily-accented thug, he actually is a shrewd political commentator who behaves flawlessly when placed in the high crust. Speaking with him is something that momentarily exposes those he is addressing to the heyday of Romanov rule, where the Russian elite was sensitive, cultured, surprisingly multi-lingual and largely self-contained. Hailing from a time before Franz Ferdinand's assassination and Anastasius' attempt to turn Russia into an alien superpower, he tends to act as a leftover of bygone years in which wars would realistically be fought in palace halls, and with words alone.

As per the mid eighteen-hundreds' standards of culture, Kirilov speaks Russian, French and English fluently and has the kind of political and cultural open-mindedness that not only pulled him away from Joseph Stalin over the years, but that also kept him away from the post-USSR Russia. That makes him the best potential detractor of modern Russia's borderline police-state social makeup, and an actually reliable commentator on Socialism. It's without much surprise that he's moved on to helming the Political Sciences department at Hope University and splits his time between history lessons and the dissection of ancient and current political models.
Weaknesses: if he depends on a maintained core temperature that's in fairly superhuman lows, then his largest weakness resides in being exposed to superhuman highs. Fire-manipulating superhumans and mages could nearly cripple him if they managed to melt the ice crystals in his cellular makeup: as his very cellular design is now tailor-made for existing in and maintaining a sub-zero environment, extreme heat quite literally makes his cells explode. He seems to be immune to classic third-degree burns, but develops large swaths of boils and liquid-filled pockets. These are usually fragile and easy enough to burst with a few gunshots or knife wounds. As he essentially melts when excessively heated, then the overall integrity of his organs is already jeopardized as soon as liquefaction draws near. Add bullets or blades to the mix, and he quickly starts to feel like a glorified gel pack that's just been ruptured.

Normal and everyday sources of heat aren't problems in and of themselves – his house is kept at temperate levels and he handles his cooking chores on his own – but he's had to remain wary of Amazo's ability to project large swaths of fire. Any mage could add further injury to this, and most Void Weavers could excite the air molecules around him until he is bathed in a kind of moving pocket of superheated air. He wouldn't last long, in this case.

Of course, his body tries to do what it can in order to combat heat sources that are starting to become problematic. Working in what's essentially “hyperthermia”, his body starts by forcing a state of drowsiness onto him. Coordination becomes impaired, thoughts become difficult to process, and sleep becomes impossible to push back. With his mind out of the equation, his body then tries to do whatever it can in order to bring his temperature down. He'll drench his clothes within moments with nothing but his own sweat and will almost uncontrollably drool as a symptom of a kind of last-ditch and desperate attempt to stimulate thirst. His heart rate will slow down and the now heat-producing organs will also shut down if they haven't partially thawed out by now...

The long and short of it is that heat is an effective way to dispatch him. It's hard to immediately put him down, but any exposure that results in steam rising off of him becomes problematic. If he's dropped into coma as a result of his exposure, then all that's needed to finish the job is either patience or a loaded gun.

Otherwise, Lev might not be Stalinist Communism's poster boy any longer, but he still is a man of the people by all accounts. Now celebrated in Hope for his post-Cold War change of heart and displayed selflessness and generosity, he is known as being someone who will drop literally everything if he sees someone in danger. He's verbally defended complete strangers after stopping on the sidewalk and physically shielded other unknowns from sources of physical harm. He puts time and resources in with volunteer groups and regularly donates to food banks in the county's greater regions. Being rather easy to rile up, it doesn't take much to work the social justice warrior within him. The greater the injustice, however, the more immediate his response. Endangering him becomes as easy as endangering anyone he might've had time to see or whose name he might remember. He'll take the bait without hesitation, in full awareness that he's walking into a trap.

Finally, it might be said that Lev became a little too nice, over the years. He'll let the worst possible insults slide on his back like water on a duck's feathers, mutely enduring abuse typically dished out by ideological holdovers from the McCarthy era. That's held him back a bit, as he's traded his reputation for a thematic nemesis with ice puns for one of a literally cool doormat. Chances are he'd be a little further along the political track – probably closer to Caliban – if he'd kept some of that old villain moxie.

Appearance: most of the city remembers him as the Red Scourge, a blue-tinged furry bruiser with aristocratic affectations and a rather cliché costume. Dig around in Alderan or Archie's things and you'll find black-and-white shots of Kirilov wearing the hammer-and-sickle ushanka of old, along with a slightly stylized Cossack's uniform. Nevermind the fact that icy blues and whites don't really mesh with bright crimson, Stalin had arranged for the most Soviet of all Soviet superhumans to follow along with an old undead warlock and instate an arm of the USSR on American soil. It sounds silly even to Lev, in hindsight, but he at least had the looks to make the concept seem threatening. He'd briefly exist in Hope as one of McCarthy's godsends, the one boogeyman anyone in favor of the Red Peril could frantically point to.

All that's left of it all, today, is the icy blue fur, the entirely white eyes and the spindles of ice that have crusted themselves into place inside his fur, where his eyebrows would be if he were human. He routinely breaks off their points so as to look a little less like a cross between Frosty the Snowman and Mister Spock, but there's no helping it. Combined with his obviously ursine features, these spindles and the lack of anything resembling irises or pupils give him a false look of brooding intensity. Nowadays, he tends to pick Navy blues, powder blues or discreet tinges of purple to balance out his permanently wintry appearance. As you could've expected, the Cossack outfit was gratefully donated to Holden Hall's museum and traded for the usual sartorial code of busy postgrad teachers. Slacks, loafers, dress shirts and V-necked wool shirts worn on top are fairly common items, along with the occasional necktie. Suit jackets can also be expected, along with bifocals he'd had to start wearing around 2015.

As with Alderan, Lev has traded the top-heavy look and the superhuman fitness regimens for the generally sedentary lifestyle of a paper-grader and lecture-giver. The end result is the formation of a comfortable belly that hasn't quite managed to dull lasting impressions of physical capability. Kirilov might look like he's more the type to defeat T-bones and mashed potatoes on a weekly basis, but he can still be counted on for the occasional bit of heavier-than-average lifting. Powers or no powers, there's obviously plenty of juice left in him. With about six feet two and some solid two hundred and seventy pounds, he still doesn't quite look like an old superhuman that's thrown his towel in. Being a bear, he hasn't quite managed to swaddle his muscle structure in excess weight – although it's not through lack of trying.
Behavior: Hope has two token Russians. One is a hyper-sensitive former Czar who seems as though he won't ever stop apologizing for his past mistakes, the other is a former villain who's found his true calling in the midst of the Battle of Hope's tragedy.

Even now, Lev remains someone who is ideologically motivated. During his years as the Red Scourge, he was only as devious as Rasputin's concocted plans allowed him to be, which allowed his opponents to understand that there wasn't any trace of sadism or cruelty in his actions: the bear was simply more than ready to tear through swaths of innocents if it meant the downtrodden would have a chance at equality and justice. He walked the villain walk and talked the villain talk, but they weren't much more than containers – devices through which his real driving force could express itself. From very early on, it was clear to Seraph, Amazo and Archie that the Red Scourge was a hero that hadn't been properly tutored in the ways of the world. It was almost impossible to get through to him, however – what with Rasputin twisting their words and offering the exact reflection of the same stupidly reductive propaganda they were forced to tolerate on a daily basis.

In a sense, Stalin had been wrong from the beginning: he'd never found a true-blue Communist, he'd actually waylaid and blinded a true-blue altruist. The mutual enemies came close to understanding one another on multiple occasions, and they at least developed an acute respect for the other one's capabilities and beliefs. Near the end of the Red Peril, the Red Scourge was less Rasputin's thematic puppet and more a noble opponent who was maybe just one eye-opener short of realizing the futility of his efforts.

It would take the Battle of Hope for Lev's eyes to open, and for the Red Scourge to be laid to rest.

The chaos and suffering unleashed by that orbital blitzkrieg rendered all ideologies to powder. Under Elysium, everyone was an ant being crushed under a boot. Only a few days were required for Lev to realize he couldn't hope to save anyone and still hope that saving them would trigger a kind of political and ideological epiphany. He quickly abandoned the rhetoric that had followed him since his arrival on American soil and almost challenged Caliban in terms of his individual involvement and personal sacrifices made in the name of Hope's defense.

After the last fires died out, Lev realized there wasn't anything left of the character that had been wearing that Cossack outfit. He turned himself in, began serving his sentence in an out-of-State supermax prison and was eventually transferred to Chimera Row. Through it all, he studied and did his best to prove to the world that he'd changed. The road to a decent postgrad academic credit was long, as life as a released prisoner didn't do him any favors. He'd killed people as the Red Scourge, he'd destroyed families. It motivated him to assume a friendly and forthcoming mindset when things went well, only to turn into a reserved and even shy person as soon as insults began to be flung at him. Even today, he feels as though he hasn't earned the right to be angry at some of his accusers, even if they're entirely wrong.

Today, Lev Kirilov does what he can with what he has. His manners coming from a punishing introduction to aristocratic social circles, he still keeps that quintessentially Russian mix of regal deference and strangely natural friendliness, as if the least interesting of his students were still deserving of being handled with honorifics, while still involving just a smidgen of familiarity. He tends to approach sociological or political discourses in the kind of half-formal, half-casual mindset you'd expect out of someone who's never mastered the use of contractions. Generally speaking, he makes his classroom, home and office feel like ciphers of Saint Petersburg's palatial halls – and it consistently feels natural. Dismissive students might confuse it all for shows of snobbery, but this honestly is as earnest as he can allow himself to be.

Insult him or insinuate something about him, however, and the didactic smiles turn plastic. They change without changing, and he feels as though he's busy neatly boxing those new barbs away with all the other sources of anger or rage he isn't allowing himself to react to. Deep down, he'd honestly like to shake some sort of personification of Western society by the shoulders, and ask it what the Hell it wants out of him. Is he still too Russian for America's taste? Is his supporting Caliban Smith during election year too Socialist a thing to do? Should he abandon all pretenses of politeness and just turn brash and demanding? Should he forego his personal convictions and turn into another selfish prick?

On most days, he honestly feels like he fits in. He's happy, productive and contributes to Society – which is his personal guiding principle. On occasion, however, a political commentator lands a cruel remark online or during prime-time news broadcasts. Sometimes, the way parts of the country are still focused on demonizing an enemy that's been all but kicked into the dirt weighs on him. In today's world, he's realizes, being of Russian descent isn't a crime. It isn't even worthy of being mentioned. However, being one of the Russians associated with the Red Peril means you'll forever be expected to be just as jingoistic in your way than your accusers that spout generalities about freedom or democracy – even if the most hardcore of patriots would cringe at them.

Still, with Hope generally leaning towards the Left, the specter of what he did and of the difficult road to his transition doesn't torment him too often. He, of course, does what he can in order to avoid stoking the proverbial fire, and avoids waxing Social-Democrat in the presence of certain people. The city has its fair share of Karthian expatriates with former ties to the UKDR, and those that haven't ended up in Chimera Row usually emigrated for the express purposes of putting the past behind them. That's exactly what Lev's done. He could've recovered his ill-gotten gains and his old base; he could've turned his old Russian gunship into a floating fortress and potentially lived like a prince, but he chose to liquidate his assets, accept the sentence associated with his crimes, and forsake the life of a grandiose supervillain for the simple life of an overworked teacher.

At the very least, he never could give any credence to the stereotype of the Russian antagonist who basically runs on vodka or other strong alcohols. Even in the early years, there was a heavy dose of temperance in his personality. Now that he's been able to free himself from the expected clichés, he comes across as more of a social or intellectual drinker, someone who might mother a single flute of champagne for hours on end, never refilling it and forgetting its existence for most of the evening.

Goals: regardless of what the pundits might say, Lev considers himself as an ideological equal to the city's workforce. You can take the Communism out of the Socialist, but you can't quite take Socialism out of someone who's always worked to care more for others than himself. Ever since his release, Lev has been relentlessly giving of himself, his time, money and academic resources to benefit his community. Generosity has become the pillar supporting everything he does, and he keeps only what he needs to pay his bills and afford himself a small cottage. He lives a bit more humbly than you'd expect from a department leader who's begun to earn honorary doctorates in Sociology and Politics, spooling everything he has into the city, the campus, his students or his friends and family.

Ask Father Curran, and he'll tell you that Lev Kirilov has transcended his past as the Red Scourge and turned into a better man, as an atheist, than a lot of the believers in his congregation. Curran might add that if the bear hasn't bought his place in Heaven by now, then something's clearly wrong.

History:
Post Reply