Dmitry Pavlovich's page

Starting Equipment: 105 gp
-Traveler's Outfit 1g
-Leather Armor 10g
-Dagger 2g
-Sword Cane 45g
-Backpack 2g
-Thieves' Tools 30g
-Waterskin 1g
-Flint & Steel 1g
-Scroll Case 1g
-2 Rations 1g

REMAINING 11gp

Mercuria-Laced Tapestry
1 healing poultice
1 haunt siphon

Dmitry was born twenty-eight years ago in the Ustalavan county of Caliphas in a small community outside of Anactoria near the Albria Woods. His parents, Pavlo and Yelena, were among the poorer groups of peat farmers operating in the area. While his father worked the nearby bogs cutting the peat (at differing times working for himself or other farmers), his mother had quick skill with a needle and supplemented the family income as a seamstress. Dmitry, as a lad, would often assist his father in cutting peat, but even as a boy he realized that such a life was not for him. Dmitry had an interest in numbers and books, of all things, though there was no room in his life to accommodate either. Neither of his parents were literate, and Dmitry himself only came across books and the like while on forays into Anactoria. He would accompany his father in hauling peat to be sold, and was fascinated by the bookkeepers and merchants in the village who read and wrote and recorded. His father would tell him that he had no use for such things, that cutting peat was good work and books were best left to nobles and shopkeepers.

Things changed shortly thereafter when both of Dmitry's parents fell to a bout of plague in the winter of his eighth year. He had no interest in joining the ranks of any of the other surrounding farms, and with no family known to him (other than a uncle his father would sometimes speak of), he left the farm and went to Anactoria. While there, he approached the merchants and travelers and other folk he had been fascinated with in his outings to the village before, looking for work and a new life. None of those to whom he spoke had any interest in taking him on; a poor farmer's boy with dirty clothes and the inability to read or write wasn't worth the investment in time or gold to teach. After milling about Anactoria for near a month, Dmitry finally did find someone who offered him a job, but it was not the type he was hoping for.

Viktor Ivanov was a man who knew books and made his money managing money. A lender, broker, banker, and currency changer, he split time between Anactoria, Caliphas, and a few other settlements in the county. He worked for a nobleman and was in charge of the man's investments; in truth it was the nobleman's gold that Viktor banked and brokered, but Viktor was the day-to-day face of these operations. He took Dmitry on, being in need of a young courier to carry statements, books, and the like between his offices. Dmitry was not very interested in being a runner, but Viktor agreed to teach him to read, which was a payment for the boy more valuable than gold.

Dmitry stayed in Viktor's home in Anactoria for the next few months, and learned more about his duties as a courier while simultaneously being taught to read and write by another of Mr. Ivanov's employees. Surprisingly, the farm boy took the written word quickly and seemed to have a natural talent for it. He read bits of pieces of many books, but his favorite was one written by a man named Petros Lorrimor. Dmitry read this book over and over, and it truly was the one tome that taught him to read, and to love the written word. Within a year he was reading and writing on par with many of the local rural adults. Beyond literacy, Dmitry was taught the importance of his position and what he would be transporting. He would not initially be carrying crucial ledgers, books, and reports, as they were entrusted to experienced couriers - Dmitry would instead start off by carrying notices and messages between Ivanov's offices and between those offices and clients. His job started locally, carrying sealed letters and scrolls from one building to another within Anactoria. He proved to be a good employee, earning adulations from Viktor, and for the next few years he continued to run letters in the man's service.

Viktor himself traveled a good deal, so Dmitry was often left in the charge of other employees whose positions were more stationary. In Viktor's absences, Dmitry would often sneak around the offices to look upon any books or ledgers he could get his hands on. He began to teach himself numbers by reading the books and notes regarding facts and figures, though truly he wasn't supposed to be looking into such things. Regardless, bookkeeping fascinated him, and he continued his self-tutelage whenever he could.

When he was fourteen, Dmitry was given a slightly higher position and began to carry more important correspondence. Further, his routes sometimes took him out of Anactoria to some of the surrounding communities who dealt with Viktor's businesses. One such route took him south to a small vineyard owned by the Naumov family. It was here that Dmitry first laid eyes on the lovely Katya Naumov, a dark-haired beauty who instantly enamored the young Dmitry. Fortunately, deliveries and pickups to and from the Naumov Vineyard were frequent, and the next few years saw the building of a relationship between Dmitry and Katya. Truly, the young woman was above his own station, but her father was a kind man who often offered Dmitry bread and beverage while the courier waited for him to sign papers. It was during these rests that he was able to talk to Katya, and as time passed it seemed as though she too fancied him.

More time passed, and eventually Dmitry's routes even had him going to Caliphas, where by this time Viktor was spending most of his days. His years of secret study paid off for him during one such visit to the soul of Ustalav, when Viktor's office was having a problem with a ledger. Dmitry proposed a suggestion that seemed to fix the error, and Viktor was impressed, completely unaware that the courier had any head for numbers. Viktor offered him a bookkeeping position, and Dmitry finally was able to work with numbers and books every day, which was a grand gift after several years of running letters. More importantly, it made him a better match for Katya, and a few short years later the two were married.

Dmitry and Katya carved a decent little life for themselves, relocating permanently to Anactoria. Dmitry worked in one of the local offices, and Viktor trusted him enough there that he came to the village less and less. Four years of happiness ended when Dmitry was twenty-two, for Katya died giving birth to their daughter Venja. But then, a new era of happiness dawned, for though Dmitry mourned deeply the loss of his wife, the hole in his heart was filled by his beloved daughter.

Alas, such happiness was not to last, for the fates had drawn a grim hand for Dmitry.

Four years after the birth of his daughter, Dmitry began being approached by different members of Sczarni families. Dmitry was roughly familiar with him, for their names would crop up from time to time in his ledgers, as the criminal families were known to have their hands in many pockets and affairs. So far, however, he had been able to avoid dealing with them directly. The Sczarni sought to utilize him, having tried to find a crack in Viktor's operations for years. They had noticed that Dmitry had a respectable amount of independence within the business, along with access to many records there in Anactoria. All that they asked of him was to give up a bit of innocent information, to "misplace" a specific ledger, and to give them a time and place of a certain transaction between a courier and associate in Caliphas. Three simple requests, and he would be a rich man, able to abandon his job and go anywhere with his daughter.

At first, Dmitry scoffed at their offer, but the more he thought on it, the more he wondered if it was worth it. Anactoria had been a good home to him, but he was always haunted by the death of his wife, still heard her screams in his dreams, still saw phantom blood on the sheets of his bed. Further, his daughter Venja was often sick during the winter, not quite hale enough to fully withstand the cold months of Ustalav. He remembered all too well the winter he lost both of his parents to sickness, and the thought of losing his daughter, his last remaining love and purpose for living, began to eat away at him. Every time she would cough, he swallowed a stone. Every time she sneezes, he saw the last gasps of his parents. Every time she cried, he saw Katya. He could not let any sort of ill fate befall his beautiful daughter, nor could he again suffer such a loss.

He agreed to the Sczarni, after months of their insistence and his own dark thoughts. He gave them their information, and procured a ledger, and all that was left for him to do was find out where and when a particular courier would be meeting a particular man. He found out, and told the Sczarni to meet him for the final exchange of information. In the last moments before going to meet them, however, he centered his moral compass. Despite his fears, doubts, and inner demons, he could not betray Viktor, the man who had given him a life. He did not meet with the Sczarni, he withheld giving them the ledger. They were not pleased. They promised him that he would rue the day that he betrayed them.

Two weeks later, Venja was gone.

She vanished in the middle of the night, with no signs of her disappearance save for a strange silvery thread on her floor. Dmitry was inconsolable, his studious demeanor replaced by wrenching pain and seething hatred. He rampaged through his own abode, tearing the place apart. He saw faces on everything - his mother, his father, Katya, and now Venja. He knew it was the Sczarni making good on their threats, and he knew what he had to do. He vowed then, cloaked in the darkness of night, amidst the broken accoutrements of his home that so perfectly symbolized the end of one life and the beginning of a next, vowed that he would find her. He would find Venja; upturn every stone in Ustalav, break down every door, pry the secrets out of every Sczarni. Without Venja, Dmitry was no longer himself, and his life meant nothing.

He left that night, left his home, left his job. He said nothing again to any of his colleagues, did not even speak to Viktor, for he could not face the man, could not admit to him what he almost did. Dmitry did, though, travel to Caliphas, for he knew that it would be the best place to begin his search, and to acquire the skills that he would need to find his daughter. And, in Caliphas, he could disappear.

In Caliphas, he hid himself away in the academies of learning, becoming a student there, for he knew that the Sczarni would likely never find him there. By day, he studied alchemy and poisons, learning these new skills while reinforcing his own and evolving them. How similar forgery was to bookkeeping. By night, he hunted the fog-gripped streets of Caliphas, but his prey was information. He watched, he studied, he tracked the paths of Sczarni through and around the city. He marked who their associated were, who their informants were, where they congregated, which taphouses they frequented, learned everything he could about them. The more he learned about them, the more he learned to be like them. He found that lies came as easily to him as numbers. Sometimes he pretended to be one of them and spoke to people he knew worked for them, or at least were their informants.

Once he was satisfied with his manipulations, he decided he needed to test out his other new skills. A darkness had invaded Dmitry then, the spirit of someone foul and despicable. The good man, the gentle bookkeeper he had once been was a ghost, and his desire, his drive to find his daughter filled him with black rage. He kidnapped informants, mostly street rats and other knaves, and he interrogated them. He tortured them. Nothing would stop his search, especially not the flesh of those were associated with the Sczarni.

During his time in Caliphas and his tutelage at the academies, Dmitry often made it a point to isolate himself from everyone else. He did not associate with anyone for the most part, and played the role of a studious bookworm, which was easy to play as it was so close to the truth. He did hear, however, of a certain Professor who was to make an appearance at the academy. Professor Petros Lorrimor was a name that caught Dmitry's attention, for it was the very same man who wrote the book that Dmitry used to learn to read. He had read Lorrimor's book countless times as a boy, and always credited that one piece of literature as the catalyst for all of his abilities. He couldn't believe that Professor Lorrimor would be there, and made sure to attend each and every one of his lectures.

During the scholar's stay at the academy, Dmitry was fortune enough to catch him alone one evening. He approached the Professor and immediately recanted his boyhood yearning for knowledge and how Lorrimor's book paved the way for his life. For a brief moment, Dmitry had forgotten his pain. He felt a certain kinship with Petros, a connection with him via that book from his childhood. Dmitry and Lorrimor spoke at length that evening, and for many other evenings during the man's stay. They exchanged stories and theories, and Dmitry even entertained the Professor's more outlandish and bizarre ideas dealing with magic and strange, supernatural creatures. Dmitry was glad that he got to meet the man, and on Lorrimor's final day, before he left, he bid his goodbyes to his conversation partner. HIs final words to Dmitry were "It brings me happiness to know that my book set you on a course for your life, Dmitry. I am honored that my work made you into a good man."

Professor Lorrimor's words were both a digging knife and cleansing fire for Dmitry. Just a few nights before, he had cut a bound man with a poisoned blade and screamed at him, demanding to know where his daughter was. Lorrimor had shattered him, and he felt so much guilt, so much shame. He realized that he had been a good man once, but darkness had overcome him and made him dark and evil. But that black cloud had lifted at those words, and he suddenly felt the pain of everything he had done fall upon him as a stone.

His nights thereafter were haunted again, but not only this time by his loved ones. Now it was his victims that screamed in his nightmares, the wounds he gave them visible on his own flesh in a predawn gloom, twixt dream and consciousness. No longer, he vowed, no longer would he stoop to become such a thing. He would not give up his search for Venja, but neither would he again let darkness and hate consume him. He was a man of knowledge and insight, not a beast.

Dmitry's prey once more became information. He left Caliphas for some time, and on his travels he realized the Sczarni had not forgotten him. They did not openly act against him, but they lurked in the shadow of shadows behind him, watching his every step. He wondered why the Sczarni did not simply capture or kill him, and the fact that they merely watched was somehow worse.

Months passed, and in Dmitry's travels, he came across a small village where a young girl had disappeared. Obviously drawn to the situation, he investigated, speaking with the parents of the girl and the other villagers. The girl had vanished without a sound, without a trace in the dead of night. When Dmitry pressed, he asked if anything had been left behind, any clue at all. The family showed him a silver thread. It was identical to the one found on Venja's floor nearly a year previously, the very same thread he still had tied to his wrist.

The villagers whispered of something, some old ghost story. They told of a strange creature that spirited young children away, never to be seen again, and left a silver hair behind as payment. Dmitry refused to believe such nonsense at first, and scoffed at their superstition, but as days and nights wore on, their tale bored holes in him. How else could be explained the silver thread at both scenes? Why, after a year of investigating the Sczarni and their dealings, had he found nothing, no trace of his daughter in Caliphas or any surrounding areas. Why?

Doubts plagued him again, doubt that he had wasted his time, doubt that he would never find Venja. No one could help him now, and he was lost. But then he remembered, there was one person who could indeed help him.

He sought out the Professor, whose own strange stories of bizarre creatures were perhaps not so outlandish after all. He was able to track the scholar down, having heard where he had last passed through and then discovering his next stop.

Yet alas, how again fate deals a grim hand for Dmitry Pavlovich.

-Goal is to locate his missing daughter, Venja. At first he believed it to be the Sczarni, and but now is starting to think it could have been something supernatural.
-Dark Secret is that while rage and pain had blinded him, he interrogated and tortured known Sczarni associates and informants to get information. He looks upon these actions with shame now.
-QUIRK #1: My character always watches his back, mildly paranoid about but mostly just vigilant for Sczarni (or other toes he may have stepped on).
-QUIRK #2: My character rarely makes connections or lasting relationships beyond information contacts.
-FLAW: My character can quickly become selfish, distracted, and even reckless whenever something arises that he believes could lead him to information about his missing daughter.

-Past Connections:
--Sczarni crime family members count among his biggest rivals and enemies, especially those he directly crossed.
--Venja, his missing daughter and sole purpose in life.
--Viktor Ivanov, his former employer and somewhat of a surrogate father figure
--Unnamed uncle, who may or may not be alive. His father's brother whom he has never met.
--Alexei, Damir, Stavo, Radovan, former colleagues.
--Katya, his wife (deceased).
--Basko Naumov, his father-in-law (deceased)
--Pavlo, his father (deceased)
--Yelena, his mother (Deceased)
-- As for the other PCs, my character could have easily come across any of them in Ustalav during his investigations...I saw that some Occult classes are being posted, so perhaps at one point he even went to a psychic or medium for guidance.

Dmitry is an average-looking man; difficult to pick him out of a crowd. He is six feet tall, weighs about 160 lbs and is of average build, not being overtly muscular nor frail. He keeps his dark brown hair of middling length so that it comes down just past his ears and wears a closely-shorn beard along his jawline. Hazel eyes flank a slightly large nose, and his eyebrows can be quite expressive. He has no real distinguishing marks or features other than the light haze of darkness under his eyes, suggesting he perhaps is not well-rested as he could be.

Dmitry dresses in a subtle mix of sturdy adventuring clothes and dayclothes of a citizen of moderate social standing. Most of his form is covered by a rugged, sturdy traveler's coat that hands down to his knees in a brownish-cream color. Beneath the duster-like coat he sports a stiff-collared, sleeveless brown jerkin, well-worn, over a scarlet long-sleeved traveler's shirt. A cravat that has seen better days hangs somewhat limply around his neck. Sturdy brown trousers and boots complete his attire.

Though he has never had much training or use for weapons and armor, he has come to appreciate the slight ease of mind a suit of leather armor can give and now wears such while traveling. He carries a dagger sheathed on his thigh which is more tool than weapon, and walks with a hickory sword-cane. The sword-cane was a common item amongst him and his colleagues in their line of work as a form of protection against pickpockets.